Communism with the Mask Off (Bolschewismus ohne Maske) by Joseph Goebbels

Background: This speech was delivered to the annual congress of the Nazi Party on 13 September 1935. Goebbels was rather proud of the effort. He wrote in his diary on 15 September: "A brilliant success. The Führer was genuinely enthused. A storm of applause, My material was deeply moving."

The source:

This text is taken from the English translation published by the Nazis in 1935. The spelling is British, and the quality of the translation is not the best.

Communism with the Mask Off

by Joseph Goebbels 

In the beginning of August, this year, one of the most authoritative English newspapers published a leading article entitled "Two Dictatorships", in which a naive and misdirected attempt was made to place before the readers of the paper certain alleged similarities between Russian Bolshevism and German National Socialism. This article gave rise to an extraordinary amount of heated discussion in international centres, which was only another proof of the fact that an astonishing misconception exists among the most prominent West European circles as to the danger which communism presents to the life of the individual and of the nation. Such people still cling to their opinion in face of the terrible and devastating experiences of the past eighteen years in Russia.

The author of the article stated that the two symbols which are to-day opposed to one another, namely that of Bolshevism and National Socialism, stand for regimes which "in essential structure are similar and in many of their laws-their buttresses-are identical. The similarity is moreover increasing". He went on to say:

"In both countries are the same censorships on art, literature, and of course the Press, the same war on the intelligentsia, the attack on religion, and the massed display of arms, whether in the Red Square or the Tempelhofer Feld."

"The strange and terrible thing is", he declared, "that two nations, once so widely different, should have been schooled and driven into patterns so drably similar."

One sees here much verbiage and little understanding. The anonymous writer of this article has obviously not studied the essential and fundamental principles either of National Socialism or Bolshevism. He considers merely certain superficial phenomena and he has not taken cognisance of what serious journalists have had to say on the matter in question or compared his views with their objective statements. This entirely erroneous judgment of the case might be passed over with a shrug of the shoulders and considered merely as part of the daily order of things, were it not for the fact that the two problems here discussed belong in their essentials to political phenomena which are important for the future of Europe. Moreover this strikingly cursory judgment on the problem is not merely a single case but has to be taken in conjunction with a much wider and more influential section of West European opinion.

In contradistinction to this, I shall try here to analyse Bolshevism into its basic elements and show these as clearly as I can to the German and European public. This is not an easy task, in view of the fact that the Propagandist Institutions of the Communist International are undoubtedly well organised and have not been unsuccessful in putting before the public of the world, outside of the Russian frontiers, an entirely false picture of Bolshevism. This picture is an extraordinarily dangerous one because of the tension which it can and must naturally cause. Let us also note the profound hatred in liberal circles throughout the world in regard to National Socialism and its practical constructive work in Germany. Hence the possibility here also of mistaken judgments, such as these already mentioned. They pass by what is essential. International communism would entirely do away with all national and racial qualities which are founded in human nature itself; in property it sees the most primary cause of the break-down of world trade in the capitalist system. Accordingly it exploits this through an extensive and carefully organised and brutal system of action, setting aside personal values and sacrificing the individual to a hollow mass-idol that is only a travesty of actual life itself. At the same time it ignores and destroys all the idealistic and higher strivings of men and nations, through its own crass and empty materialist principles. On the other hand, National Socialism sees in all these things—in property, in personal values and in nation and race and the principles of idealism—these forces which carry on every human civilisation and fundamentally determine its worth.

Bolshevism is explicitly determined on bringing about a revolution among all the nations. In its own essence it has an aggressive and international tendency. But National Socialism confines itself to Germany and is not a product for export, either in its abstract or practical characteristics. Bolshevism denies religion as a principle, fundamentally and entirely. It recognises religion only as an "opium for the people". For the help and support of religious belief, however, National Socialism absolutely places in the foreground of its programme a belief in God and that transcendental idealism which has been destined by Nature to bring to expression the racial soul of a nation. National Socialism would give the lead in a new concept and shaping of European civilisation. But the Bolshevics carry on a campaign, directed by the Jews, with the international underworld, against culture as such. Bolshevism is not merely anti-bourgeois; it is against human civilisation itself.

In its final consequences it signifies the destruction of all the commercial, social, political and cultural achievements of Western Europe, in favour of a deracinated and nomadic international cabal which has found its representation in Judaism. This grandiose attempt to overthrow the civilised world is so much more dangerous in its effects because the Communist International, which is a past master in the art of misrepresentation, has been able to find its protectors and pioneers among a great part of these intellectual circles in Europe whose physical and spiritual destruction much be the first result of a Bolshevic world revolution.

Bolshevism, which is in reality an attack on the world of the spirit, pretends to be intellectual itself. Where circumstances demand, it comes as a wolf in sheep's clothing. But underneath the false mask which it here and there assumes there are always the satanic forces of world destruction. And where it has had the opportunity of practising its theories it has created "The Paradise of the Workers and Peasants", in the shape of a fearful desert of starving and hungering people. If we are to take the word of its doctrine then we find a terrible contradiction between its theory and its practice. Its theory is glowing and grandiose but it carries poison in its attractive gloss. Over against this, what we have from it in reality is terrible and forbidding. This is shown in the millions of sacrifices which have been made in honour of it, through executions with the sword, the axe or the hangman's rope or hunger. Its teaching promises "the fatherland of the workers and peasants", which shall know no frontiers, and a classless social order which will be protected against exploitation through the state, and it preaches an economic principle in which "everything belongs to everybody" and that thereby a real and universal world peace will be ushered in.

Millions of workers on hunger-wages such as are not thought of in western Europe, millions of afflicted and sorrowing peasants who have been robbed of their land, which is being completely ruined by the stupid experiment of a paralysing collectivism, famine which claims millions of victims year after year in a country of such vast extent that it might serve as a granary for the whole of Europe, the formation and equipping of an army which, according to the claims of all leading Bolshevists, is to be used for carrying out the world revolution, the brutal and merciless domination of this madly-led apparatus of State and Party at the hands of a small terrorist minority which is mostly Jewish—all this speaks another language, a language which the world cannot listen to permanently because it rings with the story of nameless suffering and indescribable hardships borne by a nation of a hundred-and-sixty million people.

The fact that, in order to carry out its aims, Bolshevism uses propagandist methods which are perceptible only by those which have experience in such things and are entirely accepted in good faith by the average citizen makes this Terror International extraordinarily dangerous for other states and peoples. This propaganda starts out from the principle that the end sanctifies the means, that lies and slander, the terrorising of the individual and of the mass, robbery and burnings and strikes and insurrection, espionage and sabotage of armies can and ought to be made use of, and therewith that the aim of revolutionising the whole world must be specially and solely kept in view. This extraordinarily pernicious method of influencing the masses of the people does not stop before anything or anybody. Those alone are competent to deal with it who see into its secret driving forces and are capable of adopting the necessary contrary measures. This propaganda understands how to adopt every instrument to its purpose. It takes on an intellectual shape in intellectual circles. It is bourgeois with the bourgeoisie and proletarian with the proletariat. It is mild and passive where that attitude suits and it is pugnacious wherever it meets opposition that needs to be suppressed.

Bolshevism carries on its International propaganda through the Komintern.

A few weeks ago this apparatus for world destruction made public to the whole of Europe its plan of campaign for the annihilation of the nations and the states, all arranged and set forth in its tactical and strategical elements. Yet the bourgeois world, whose extirpation was announced openly and without any reserve whatsoever, failed to make any public protest of indignation and unite all the forces at its command as a definite counter-defence.

The cry of warning was raised only by those states in which Bolshevism has been finally overcome through the restoration of national principles. But this cry of warning was laughed at by the threatened bourgeois world and set aside as an exaggerated alarm.

Swept clear of internal enemies and united under the National Socialist standard, Germany placed herself at the head of the groups marshalled in the fight against the international bolshevisation of the world. Herein she is quite aware that she is fulfilling a world mission which reaches out beyond all national frontiers. On the successful issue of this mission depends the fate of our civilised nations. As National Socialists, we have seen Bolshevism through and through.

We recognise it beneath all its masks and camouflages. It stands before us derobed of its trappings, bare and naked in its whole miserable imposture. We know what its teachings are, but we know also what it is in practice.

Here I shall give an unvarnished picture, which is backed up in all particulars by incontestable facts. If there is a spark of reason left in the world, and the faculty for clear thinking, then the states and peoples must be shocked at the prospect and induced to come together for their common defence against this acute danger.

I leave the methods and practices of the Communist Propaganda and theory within and without Russia to speak through examples which appear to me to be symptomatic. These examples could be replaced and supplemented by thousands of others, all of which when taken together show up the terrible aspect of this world disease.

Murder of individuals, murder of hostages and mass murder are the favourite means applied by Bolshevism to get rid of all opposition to its propaganda.

In Germany three hundred National Socialists fell victims to the Communist terror practised on individuals. On the 14th January 1930, Horst Wessel was shot through the half-opened door of his house by the Communist, Alberecht Hohler-called Ali-his accessories being the Jews, Salli Eppestein and Else Cohn. On the 9th of August 1931, the police captains, Anlauf and Lenck, were shot down in the Bülowplatz in Berlin. The Communist leaders, Heinz Neumann and Kippenberger, were accused as instigators of the murder. Shortly afterwards Heinz Neumann was arrested in Switzerland because of a passport which was invalid and a request for extradition made by Germany was not granted, on the plea that it was a "political crime". These are only some single examples of the communist terror wreaked on individuals. As further instances of the blood lust and cruelty to which they bear evidence we may turn to the hostage murders which took place in previous years.

On April 30th 1919, in the Courtyard of the Luitpold Gymnasium, in Münich, ten hostages, among them a woman, were shot through the backs, their bodies rendered unrecognisable and taken away. This act was done at the order of the Communist Terrorist, Eglhofer, and under the responsibility of the Jewish Soviet Commissaries, Levien, Levien-Nissen and Axelrod. In 1919, during the Bolshevic regime of the Jew, Bela Kun, whose real name was Aron Cohn, in Budapest twenty hostages were murdered. During the October Revolution in Spain eight prisoners were shot at Ovièdo, seventeen in Turon; and in the barracks at Pelàno, to protect a communist attack, thirty-eight prisoners were placed at the head of the insurgents and some of them shot. At the Komintern Congress, on July 31st, 1935, the communist leader, Carcio, expressly declared that this revolution was carried through "under the leadership of the communists".

This list of bloodshed becomes all the more fearful and horrible when we add to it the apparently incredible number of mass murders carried out by the Communists. As a classical prototype of this, we have the Paris Commune of the year 1871, which was passionately celebrated by Karl Marx and is approved today by modern Soviets as the model of the Bolshevic World Revolution. The number of victims who fell in that terrible year 1871 can no longer be ascertained. The Jewish Tschekist, Bela Kun, made an experiment which rivalled the Paris Commune in bloodshed when he ordered the execution of 60,000 to 70,000 people in the Crimea. For the most part, these executions were carried out with machine-guns. At the Municipal Hospital in Alupka, 272 sick and wounded were brought out on stretchers in front of the gate of the Institution and there shot. The truth of this has been officially confirmed in the report made to the Geneva Red Cross. During the 133 days of his Terror Rule in Hungary the Jew, Bela Kun, had innumerable men murdered. The names of 570 of those have been given in official documents. In November 1934, the Chinese Marshal, Tschiangkaischek, made public the information that in the province of Kiangsi one million people were murdered by the communists and six millions robbed of all their possessions. All these blood-stained and horror-raising events have reached a climax in the mass murders committed throughout Soviet Russia.

According to returns given by the Soviets themselves and taking reliable sources into account, the number of persons executed within the first 5 years of Soviet rule must be placed at about 1,860,000, in round numbers. Of these, 6,000 were teachers and professors, 8,800 were doctors of medicine, 54,000 were army officers, 260,000 soldiers, 105,000 police officials, 49,000 gendarmes, 12,800 civil servants, 355,000 persons of the upper classes, 192,000 workers, 815,000 peasants.

The Soviet statistician, Oganowsky, estimates the number of persons who died of hunger in the years 1921/1922 at 5,200,000.

The Austrian Cardinal-Archbishop, Monsignor Innitzer, said in his appeal of July 1934, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the Soviet Union. During his speech delivered before the House of Lords on the 25th of July, 1934, the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking on reports relative to the famine victims in Soviet Russia in 1933, said that the number was nearer to six than three millions.

We have thus before our eyes a full picture of this fearful and harrowing mass terrorisation which is only approximately paralleled by even the most blood-curdling examples of war or revolution that are recorded in the history of the world. This is the actual system of bloodshed and terror and death which is carried out by hysterical and criminal political maniacs who would have it copied in every country and among every people with the same terrorizing practices, in so far as they might find the possibility of doing so.

In view of all this, it would be idle to bring forward proofs of the spirit of discipline and generous consideration which the National Socialists showed in carrying through their revolutionary aims.

Such is "the strange and terrible" resemblance between the methods followed by the two regimes which the writer of the article in the English newspaper alleges to be similar in "essential structure". But the facts to which I have referred do not fill out the picture. Revolutions cost money. Propaganda campaigns throughout the world must be financed. Bolshevism procures the means of doing so after its own fashion.

In the summer of 1907 Stalin led the notorious bomb attack at Tiflis on a money transport from the State Bank. Thirty persons fell victims to the attack. The 250,000 roubles which were robbed from the transport, were sent to Lenin, who was then in Switzerland. They were to be at his disposal for revolutionary purposes. On the 17th of January 1908 the Jew, Wallack-Meer, who now goes by the name of Litwinow and has been Chairman of the Council of the League of Nations, was arrested in Paris in connection with the bombing and robbing of the transport at Tiflis.

The Communist Party in Germany organised and led the plunder expeditions there and also the robbery of explosives from official depots. The list of such cases brought before the Courts of the Reich is very long. In this list are thirty crimes described as major and extreme cases. To them must be added the burnings and bombings organised and perpetrated without any consideration whatsoever for the lives of innocent persons.

On the 16th April 1925, there was an explosion in the Cathedral of Sophia, which had been organised and carried out by the Bolshevics. In July 1927 the Communists set the Palais de Justice at Vienna on fire. To celebrate the Lenin Feast, on 22nd January 1930, the Simonoff Monastery at Moscow, a building dating from the 14th century, was blown up. On the night of 27th/28th February 1933 the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire as a signal for the armed communist rising. Through the medium of strikes, street fights and armed risings, the first preparatory stage of the Bolshevic revolution is meant to be effected. The methods used are the same in all countries. A long series of revolutionary acts which might be added on all sides furnish a striking witness of this. In one of its propagandist publications, the Komintern boasted that it had organised nearly all the strikes which have taken place during recent years. These strikes find their violent sequel in street fights. From the street fight to the armed rising is but one step. In this sequence, the following risings took place: October 1917 in Russia, January 1919 the Spartacus rising in Germany, 1920 the Max Hoelz revolt in Vogtland, and the Red Army in the Ruhr district, 1921 in Central Germany, September 1923 at Hamburg, December 1924 at Reval, on the 23rd October 1926, 22nd February 1927 and 21st March 1927 at Shanghai. December 1927 in Canton, October 1934 in Spain, April 1935 in Cuba and May 1935 in the Philippines.

Bolshevic propaganda aims its chief blows against the armed forces of a country; because the Bolshevics know that if they were to adopt the principle of trying to secure support from the majority of the people they could never carry out their plans. Force, therefore, is the only means left to them; but in every well-ordered state this meets with the opposition of the army. The Bolshevics accordingly feel bound to introduce their disintegrating propaganda within the ranks of the army itself. Their idea is to corrupt it from within and thus render it ineffective as a bulwark against anarchy.

Before the advent of National Socialism to power in Germany there was the closest cooperation between the Soviet espionage and the Communist organisations here. A foreign department of the O.G.P.U. operated offically in our country. It was the special representative and directive agent of the Communist espionage. The aim of this espionage was not only to obtain military secrets in a traitorous way, but also to carry on a system of sabotage among the police and the army. Part of the programme was to introduce a mutinous spirit into the Reichswehr and by an increasing work of revolutionary instruction to bring about a revolt of the soldiers and sailors in the German defence forces.

From July 1931 to December 1932 one-hundred-and-eleven cases of high treason were dealt with before the German Courts. These cases originated with the activities of the Communist Party. Furthermore, there was an extraordinary number of cases of espionage of a treasonable character in the industrial factories. The most boorish example of the interference of "Soviet Diplomats" for the purpose of creating domestic political trouble in another country is afforded by the Jewish Soviet Ambassador, Joffe, who had to leave Berlin on the 6th November 1918, because he had utilized the diplomatic courier to transport sabotage material which was to be used to undermine the German army and make the revolution possible. What were called "Revolution Funds" were used in great part by Liebknecht for the purchase of weapons for the German Communists, and partly also for the production of propaganda material to be used among the army. On the 26th December 1918, one of the Socialists members of the Reichstag, the Jew, Dr. Oskar Cohn, declared that on the 5th of the previous month, he had received 4 million roubles from Joffe for the purpose of the German Revolution.

We can now see that all these activities were meant for the purpose of bringing about the downfall of the German Reich through the undermining and corruption of the German Army.

Amid all these single acts of terror, of hostage murders and mass murders, plunder and arson, strikes and armed risings, espionage and sabotage of armies, we see the Communist World Propaganda showing its forbidding and grimacing countenance. An idea and a movement which has used such dastardly and revolting means to secure power and to hold it can maintain itself only by chicanery, slander and falsehood. These are the typical methods used by Bolshevism in its propaganda; and they are applied in different ways according to the suitability of the occasion. Thus, for example, we can understand how it is that crises, catastophes etc. which happen in other countries outside the Soviet Union are exploited by the Bolshevic Propaganda, whereas we are told that within the Soviet frontiers a work of social construction is in progress that has banished economic distress and created a State in which there is no unemployment. The real truth is that a condition of commercial disorder exists throughout the country and an industrial collapse which baffles description. The "Land without Unemployment" contains hundreds of thousands and even millions of beggars and homeless children who throng the streets of the big cities, and hundreds of thousands who are condemned to banishment and forced labour.

While in all the other countries alleged Capitalist and Fascist dictatorships are in power, Russia affords an example of freedom and democratic order. So we are told.

In reality this land is wilting under the Jewish-Marxist rule of force, which will stop at no means to maintain itself in power. The pretended freedom and right of self-determination among the nationalities constituting the Soviet Union turns out in fact to be a process of enslavement and extirpation of those nationalities themselves. The pretended liberation of colonial and semi-colonial peoples through the international proletariat is, when looked at in its true light, a blood-stained and ruthless example of Soviet Imperialism of the worst kind.

In Germany itself, before our advent to power, the pronouncements of the Communist Party varied unscrupulously according to the condition of the times. At first Germany was "a semi-colonial sacrifice to the Versailles Powers and was held down through the League of Nations". But when the National Socialist movement began to make headway among the German public, the Communist Party put forth a programme of "social and national liberation". Then they proclaimed a proletariat confederacy between Berlin and Moscow and against Versailles and the League of Nations. Today a military pact has been made with Paris and Prague and the Soviets have entered the hitherto defamed League of Nations, which used to be known as "The Robber League".

The so-called peace policy of the Soviet Union practically shows itself in world-revolutionary intrigues among the other countries, in unscrupulous stirring-up of conflicts between the various states, while at the same time it is arming at a fantastic rate in preparation for a war of aggression. People in West-European countries talk of a social order without class distinction; but in Russia itself, there is a violent differentiation between the privileged and dispossessed castes. The Soviet propaganda speaks of "a paradise of children that contains the happiest youth in the world".

The real state of the case however shows us millions of unsupported children, the existence of child labour and even the death penalty for children. Bolshevic propaganda deceitfully talks of the "emancipation of woman through communism". The truth is that the institution of marriage has been completely set aside, that there is a terrible disintegration and abolition of family life, that there is an absence of employment for women and a state of prostitution that is alarmingly on the increase.

Such a regime, in which theory and practice are in glaring contradiction, cannot possibly maintain its position except by the propagation of falsehood and unscrupulous hypocrisy.

Before the 30th January, 1933, each time that a workman was murdered by order of the Communists the crime was imputed to the National Socialists. There were constant false reports of mutinies among the Storm Troops and honest German workmen were branded as strike-breakers. When Horst Wessel was assassinated the public horror became so great that the Communists had to bow before it; and, to clear themselves, they put forward the story that this dastardly political misdeed arose from an altercation between rival claimants to a mistress. When Norkus, who was a member of the Hitler Youth, was stabbed by some communist brutes the "Rote Fahne" barefacedly declared that Norkus was killed by a Nazi spy; so that the Nazis were alleged to have murdered a seventeen-year-old member of their own party in order to procure material to have the German Communist Party forbidden by law. The same happened when Maikowski and Gatschke were assassinated.

When National Socialism showed up the work of the Communist Party in Germany the Communist International started the propagandist atrocity stories against National Socialism. The London mock trial was meant to acquit the Communist Party of any guilt of burning the Reichstag by claiming that it had been supported and approved by leading National Socialists. The dead member of the Reichstag could not deny what had been falsely attributed to him. Later on, however, avowals were made by people who had formerly been communist leaders, that not a single word of the truth was contained in the memorandum.

The whole thing was avowed by them to have been falsified in all its details for the purpose of bringing National Socialism into discredit before the world. Jurists and journalists of repute, and even an English Lord, descended to the level of making marionettes of themselves at this London mock trial.

Since that time the communists have been carrying on a world-wide systematic work of propaganda against Germany, because they recognise and realise that the National Socialists are their most dangerous enemies. Among the eternally recurring themes of this communist agitation are the stories of war preparations in the interests of German imperialism, preparations for a revanche against France, annexations in Denmark and Holland and Switzerland, in the Baltic States and the Ukraine etc. and a German crusade against the Soviet Union, dissensions in the Party and the Government, especially between the Party and the Army, growing discontent among the masses, assassinations of leading men in Germany or attempts on their lives, preparations for an inflation and the coming of a complete economic collapse, the murder and torturing of prisoners, religious presecutions and cultural vandelisms of all kinds.

These propagandist falsehoods are sent out through thousands of channels and in thousands of ways, boureois intellectualism-sometimes unconsciously, sometimes consciously-is pressed into the service of this campaign of defamation. In all European capitals there are large offices for the spread of this poison throughout the world and large subsidies are furnished by the Komintern to prepare and carry out the work. These organisations are constant centres of unrest among the nations. They never tire of stirring up trouble every way they possibly can.

That is Bolshevic propaganda. That is the form in which it clothes itself and lives, using falsehood and slander and chicanery, so as to make the nations suspicious of one another and hate one another, thus spreading a general spirit of unrest; because the Bolshevics know so well that they can never bring the communist idea to triumph except in an age that is distracted and sceptical.

In Germany we have religious controversies which arise from profound questions of conscience but have nothing whatsoever to do with a denial of religion. These controversies are exploited sometimes by harmless and sometimes malicious critics and a parallel is drawn between them and the absolutely dogmatic atheism of the Bolshevic International. To realise the grotesqueness of the parallel it is only necessary to point to a few examples in the theory and practice of Communism.

In the programme of the Communist International it is openly and freely declared that the struggle against every kind of religion must be carried on ruthlessly and systematically. Lenin declared that "religion is the opium of the people and it is a species of fusel oil". These statements are published in the fourth volume of his "Works".

At the second Congress of Atheists, Bucharin declared that religion must be "destroyed with the bayonet". The Jew, Gubermann, who, under the name of Jaroslawski, is the leader of the Association of Militant Atheists in the Soviet Union, has made the following declaration: "It is our duty to destroy every religious world-concept... If the destruction of ten million human beings, as happened in the last war, should be necessary for the triumph of one definite class, then that must be done and it will be done."

In its issue of 6th November 1930 The Atheist, the monthly periodical which is the central organ of the Association of Militant Atheists, wrote the following: "We shall burn down all the churches of the world and raze all the prisons to the ground." In all educational establishments throughout the Soviet Union religious instruction is forbidden and in its place there has been introduced a systematic instructional course in Marxist atheism. Children under the age of 18 are forbidden to take part in religious services and prayers. The Church Law of the 8th April 1929 has established a situation in which spiritual and religious communities are deprived of all rights. All the clergy and their families belong to the dispossessed class of Soviet citizens, thus automatically losing their right to work or earn their livelihood, and they are liable to be removed from their domicile at any time whatsoever.

Such is the theory and world concept of the juridical principles underlying Bolshevic atheism, and such principles are accordingly carried out in practice.

Up to 1930, 31 bishops, 1,600 clergy and 7,000 monks were murdered under the Soviet regime. According to statistics available for 1930, there were then confined in prisons, under starvation conditions, 48 bishops, 3,700 clergy and 8,000 monks and nuns. The "International League against the Third International" at Geneva issued statistics on August 6th 1935, showing that in Russia 40,000 priests had been arrested, banished or murdered. Nearly all the Orthodox churches and chapels have been either destroyed or else closed to religious worship and converted into clubs, cinemas, barns etc. Prior to our advent to power, the atheist propaganda carried out by the Marxists in Germany, whose forces we have overthrown, took its stand in favour of the dreadful state of things which I have described. The Social Democratic "League of German Freethinkers" alone had a membership of 600,000. The Communist "League of Proletarian Freethinkers" had close on 160,000 members. Almost without exception, the intellectual leaders of Marxist atheism in Germany were Jews, among them being Erich Weinert, Felix Abraham, Dr. Levy-Lenz and others. At regular meetings, held in the presence of a notary public, members were requested to register their declaration of withdrawal from their church for a fee of 2 Marks. And thus the fight for atheism was carried on. Between 1918 and 1933 the withdrawals from the German Evangelical Churches alone amounted to two-and-a-half million persons in Germany. The programme which these atheistic societies laid down in regard to sexual matters is amply characterised in the following demands publicly expressed at meetings and distributed in leaflet form:

1. The complete abrogation of those paragraphs of the law dealing with the crime of abortion, and the right to have abortion procured free of charge in State Hospitals.

2. Non-interference with prostitution.

3. The abrogation of all bourgeois-capitalistic regulations in regard to marriage and divorce.

4. Official registration to be optional and the children to be educated by the community.

5. Abrogation of all penalties for sexual perversities and amnesty to be granted to all persons condemned as "sexual criminals".
 

Truly a case of methodical insanity, which has for its aim the wilful destruction of the nations and their civilization and the substitution of barbarism as a fundamental principle of public life.

Where are the men behind the scenes of this virulent world movement? Who are the inventors of all this madness? Who transplanted this ensemble into Russia and is today making the attempt to have it prevail in other countries? The answer to these questions discloses the actual secret of our anti-Jewish policy and our uncompromising fight against Jewry; for the Bolshevic International is in reality nothing less than a Jewish International.

It was the Jew who discovered Marxism. It is the Jew who for decades past has endeavoured to stir up world revolutions through the medium of Marxism. It is the Jew who is today at the head of Marxism in all the countries of the world.

Only in the brain of a nomad who is without nation, race and country could this satanism have been hatched. And only one possessed of a satanic malevolence could launch this revolutionary attack. For Bolshevism is nothing less than brutal materialism speculating on the baser instincts of mankind. And in its fight against West European civilisation it makes use of the lowest human passions in the interests of International Jewry.

The theory underlying this political and economic fanaticism was excogitated by a Jew named Karl Mordechai, alias Marx, the son of a Rabbi in Treves. A variant of the same theory sprang from the brain of another Jew called Ferdinand Lassalle. He was the son of the Jewish Chaim Wolfsohn from Loslau, who changed his name first to Losslauer and then to Lasel and finally to Lassalle. The Labour Minister of the Paris Commune was the Jew, Leo Fraenkel. The Jewish terrorist, Karl Cohen, was the friend of Marx. On the 7th May 1866, in Unter den Linden, Berlin, this Cohen made two attempts to murder Bismarck by shooting at him.

In Pre-war days the editorial staff of the "Vorwaerts", the German Socialist organ, already employed 15 Jews, the majority of whom subsequently became leaders of Communism in Germany. Among these were Kurt Eisner, Rudolf Hilferding, and Rosa Luxemberg. During the Great War the Polish Jews, Leo Joggisches and Rosa Luxemberg, were at the head of the driving forces intent on bringing about Germany's military downfall and the subsequent world revolution. Another Jew-Hugo Haase-subsequently chairman of the U.S.P.D. (Independent German Socialist Party) demanded the refusal of war credits on August 4th 1914.

On the 10th November 1918, there was formed the "Council of Six Representatives of the People" which included the Jews Hasse and Landsberg. On the 16th December 1918, was held the first meeting of the "General Congress of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet of Germany". In this congress the Jews, Cohen-Reuss and Hilferding, were the principal speakers. The armed forces of Germany were represented by the Jew Hodenberg, for the VIII Army, the Jew Levinsohn, for the IV, the Jew Siegfried Marck for the Army Dept. A, Nathan Moses for Dept. B. Jacob Riesenfeld represented the Army group of Kiew and Otto Rosenberg represented the Army group of Kassel.

The first Communist Party Congress was held in Berlin on the 31st December 1918, at which the Jewess Rosa Luxemburg was elected leader. The Reich Conference of the Spartacus movement, held on the 29th December 1918, was formally opened by the official representative of the Soviet Union, a Jew named Karl Radek Sobelsohn, whilst Rosa Luxemburg appeared as one of the official speakers.

On the night between the 6th and 7th April 1919, after the removal of the Jew Eisner in Munich, the Soviet Republic was proclaimed there. The leading part in this was taken by the Jews Landauer, Toller, Lipp, Erich Muehsam and Wadler.

On the 14th April 1919, a second Soviet Government was formed in Munich, with the Jews Leviné-Nissen, Levien and Toller at its head. The Press of the German Communist Party in Berlin was controlled by the Jews Meyer, Thalheimer, Scholem, Friedlaender etc. The lawyers who functioned on behalf of the German Communist Party were the Jews Litten, Rosenfeld, Joachim, Apfel, Landsberg etc. The well known Bolshevic Jew Raffes, writes: "The hatred of Czarism against the Jews was justified; because from the 'sixties onwards in all the revolutionary parties the Government had to deal with the Jews as the most active members."

At the second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Russia, in 1903, the split occurred which divided the party into Bolshevics and Menshevics. In the one as well as in the other of these parties the authoritative positions were held by Jews.

These were as follows:

In the Menshevics: Martor (Zederbaum), Trotzki (Bronstein), Dan (Gurwitsch), Martynow, Liber (Goldmann), Abramowitsch (Rein), Goreff (Goldmann) etc.

In the Bolshevics: Borodin (Grusenberg)-subsequently Leader of the bolshevic Revolutionary movement in China, at present Bolshevic Commissary in Mongolia. Frumkin, Hanecki (Fuerstenberg), Jaroslawski (Gubelmann)-Leader of the atheist movement in the Soviet Union and throughout the world, Kamenew (Rosenfeld), Laschéwitsch, Litwinow (Wallach),-at present Foreign Soviet Commissary and formerly Chairman of the League of Nations, Ljadow (Mandelstamm), Radek (Sobelsohn), Sinowjew - 1919 to 1926 leader of the Communist International, Sokolnikow (Brilliant), Swerdlow-close friend and co-worker of Lenin.
 

In the beginning of August 1917, the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevic Party was opened. The presiding committee was made up of 3 Russians, 6 Jews and 1 Georgian. On the 23rd October 1917 the historic session of Z.K. (Central Committee) was held. Here the armed revolt was decided upon. For the purpose of taking over the leadership of the revolt a "Political Bureau" and a "War Revolutionary Centre" were established. These political and military centres of the Bolshevic Revolution were made up of 2 Russians, 6 Jews, 1 Georgian and 1 Pole.

In the English "Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia", which was presented to Parliament in April 1919, by Command of His Majesty, Report No. 6 contains the following: A telegram from Sir M. Findlay to Mr. Balfour (received on 18th September 1918):

"Following is report by Netherlands Minister at Petrograd, 6th September, received here today, on the situation in Russia, in particular as affecting British subjects and British interests under Minister's protection: . . .

"At Moscow I had repeated interviews with Chicherin and Karahan. Whole Soviet Government was sunk to the level of a criminal organisation. Bolshevics realize that their game is up, and have entered upon a career of criminal madness. . .

"The danger is now so great that I feel it my duty to call the attention of the British and all other Governments to the fact that if an end is not put to Bolshevism in Russia at once the civilisation of the whole world will be threatened....I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the War, which is still raging and unless, as above stated Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organised and worked by Jews who have no nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things. The only manner in which this danger could be averted would be a collective action on the part of all Powers."

On the 13th November 1934 the newspaper The Moment, which is brought out at Warsaw and is one of the East European leading Jewish journals, published an article (In No. 260B) which was entitled "Laser Moisséjewitsch Kaganowitsch" (Stalin's deputy and right-hand man). The article states: "He is a great man, this Laser Moisséjewitsch-he will one day rule over the country of the Czars... His daughter, who will soon be 21, is now Stalin's wife. . . and he is good to the Jews - Laser Moisséjewitsch. You see, it is good to have a man in one of the key positions".

Of the so most authoritative functionaries from the Party and State in the highest councils of the U.S.S.R. we find that more than 20 are Jews and only 17 Russians, whereas the percentage of Jews to the whole population of the U.S.S.R. is only 1.8.

The People's Commissary for the Interior (formerly Tscheka or O.G.P.U.) is the Jew Jagoda. In the Communist International (the "General Staff of the World Revolution")-the Jew Pjatnitzki plays the most important role.

The leadership of the Bolshevic revolutionary movement in all countries lay and still lies in Jewish hands. In some countries, such as Poland and Hungary, they are in exclusive control of this movement.

In the trial against the Jewish communist Schmelz in March 1935, the Polish Police Commissioner Landèbzrski declared as witness that 98% of those arrested in Poland on charges of communistic intrigues were Jews.

The actual leader in the movement for the Bolshevisation of China is the Jew Borodin-Grusenberg.

Therewith we may close the account.

That is Communism with the mask off. That is its theory, its practice and its propaganda. I have given a bald and staid account of facts which have been gathered mostly from official sources; but this account points to a state of affairs which is so terrible and revolting in all its effects that it must shock the average civilised human being. This gospel of "the emancipation of the proletariat from the yoke of capitalism" is the worst and most brutal kind of capitalism that can be imagined. It has been thought out, set afoot and led under the inspiration of the Mammon worship and materialist thought which is incarnated in international Jewry, scattered throughout every country of the globe. It is no social experiment. It is nothing else than a mammoth system for the expropriation and despoiling of the Aryan directive classes in all the nations, and the substitution of the Jewish underworld in their place. Those people who put themselves forward here as the apostles of a new teaching and the liberators of mankind are in reality figures that herald anarchy and chaos for the civilised world.

There is no longer any political question at issue here. This thing cannot be judged or estimated by political rules or principles. It is iniquity under a political mask. It is not something to be brought before the bar of world history but rather something that has to be dealt with by the judicial administration of each country. It must be met with the same ruthless and even brutal means with which it strives to usurp power or hold power in its hands. Here there can be no barganing; because the danger that threatens Europe is acute. Overnight it might break in among the civilised nations of the world and spread universal catastrophe. Those States that make peace with it will soon learn from experience that it is not they who will tame Bolshevism but that Bolshevism will bring them under its heel. It cannot be said that the Komintern has changed its practices. It is and remains what it always was-the propagandist and revolutionary machinery which is avowedly intended to bring about the downfall of the West.
 

Bolshevism is the declared enemy of all nations and of all religions and of all human civilisation. The World Revolution is now, as always, its acknowledged and proclaimed goal. Stalin himself has said, as the organ of the War Commissariat, "The Red Star", in January 1935, triumphantly announced: "Under Lenin's banner, in the proletarian revolution, we shall triumph over the whole world." And the communist emigrant, Pieck, said at the Seventh World Congress of the Komintern, held on the 28th July this year: "The triumph of Socialism in Soviet Russia proves at the same time that the triumph of Socialism throughout the whole world is inevitable." On the day before the Congress was held, "L'Humanité" (the organ of the French Communists) greeted it with the outburst: "Long live the Komintern, the General Staff of the World Revolution."

Traffic with Bolshevism is not possible either on a political basis or on the basis of general principles in life. The acknowledgement of the Soviet Union on the part of the United States has given rise to an increase in communist propaganda, innumerable strikes and general unrest throughout America. The military pact between France and the Soviet Union led shortly afterwards to an increase of communist votes at the municipal elections, in which they won 43 mandates and thus doubled the number of mandates formerly held by them, while all the other parties lost accordingly. The military alliance between Czecho-Slovakia and the Soviet Union led to sabotaging in the army and to an unexpected increase of communist votes at the elections which followed.

Whoever has made pacts with Bolshevism will have reason to rue his act.

Nothing could be farther from our minds than the wish to prescribe for other nations and their governments or even to counsel them. We do not mix up in their domestic affairs. We only see the dangers that threaten Europe and we raise our voices in warning, so that the magnitude of those dangers may be recognised.

As far as we ourselves are concerned, we have completely overcome this menace. Indeed perhaps, outside of his work in Germany, the greatest service which our Führer has rendered the world is that here in Germany he has set up a barrier against world Bolshevism against which the waves of this vile Asiatic-Jewish flood break in vain. He has taught us not only to recognise Bolshevism as the world's greatest enemy but also to meet it face to face and crush it. Instead of this teaching he has supplied a new and better and nobler ideal for the liberation of a whole nation. In the Sign of this Idea we have fought our battles and brought our banners to victory. This ideal has enabled us to free Germany from the menace of Bolshevism and banish it once and for all from the German nation. Today we know how to cope with these insidious forces.

The nation has been rendered immune against the poison of the red anarchy. It has repudiated the false and hollow catch-words of the communistic world propaganda. Seriously and industriously and with patience and discipline it has given itself to the solution of problems which arise out of its own destiny. History will one day give due credit to the Führer for having saved Germany from the most acute and deadly peril by overthrowing Bolshevism and thereby saving the whole civilisation of the West from the abyss that yawned before it.

I hope that it will not be left to posterity to recognise the greatness of this historic mission, but that it will acknowledged by our contemporaries and that they will decide to act upon the truth of its teachings. As the true and loyal Old Guard of the Führer and the Party, we rejoice that we are standing under his banners in this most decisive struggle that the history of the world has experienced.

The following note is appended to the end of Goebbels' speech:

"In the famine spring that is now coming in, shall similar events recur as those which took place in the year 1933, when numberless innocent people in the Ukraine, the Volga district, in the Northern Caucasus and other areas perished of hunger?

"The undersigned organisations have until now taken up the position that questions of humanity and provision for relief ought to be considered independently of political and social interests. They consider it a duty of the most elementary human and purely charitable nature not to remain silent about these conditions but to allow the voice of conscience speak again. For the sake of the starving and dying people, and to avoid a catastrophe such as that of 1933, they demand that the situation should be made entirely clear and that the necessary provision for relief should be assured."

The signatory organisations are:-

The Interdenominational and International Relief Committee for the Hunger Areas in the Soviet Union, the Interdenominational and International Russian Relief Work of the European Headquarters for Church Relief Action, and The Jewish Russian Relief.

Such are the authorities to which Dr. Goebbels refers in speaking of the famine conditions which exist in Russia under the Bolshevic regime.