We Demand
Background: The following essay was published in the fourth issue of Der Angriff, dated 25 July 1927. Goebbels makes a general attack on the government without being very clear as to just what policies should be followed. It is typical of his general style during the early years of his activity in Berlin.
The source: “Wir fordern,” Der Angriff, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1935), pp. 18-19.
The German people is an enslaved people. Under international law, it is lower than the worst Negro colony in the Congo. One has taken all sovereign rights from us. We are just good enough that international capital allows us to fill its money sacks with interest payments. That and only that is the result of a centuries-long history of heroism. Have we deserved it? No, and no again!
Therefore we demand that a struggle against this condition of shame and misery begin, and that the men in whose hands we put our fate must use every means to break the chains of slavery.
Three million people lack work and sustenance. The officials, it is true, work to conceal the misery. They speak of measures and silver linings. Things are getting steadily better for them, and steadily worse for us. The illusion of freedom, peace and prosperity that we were promised when we wanted to take our fate in our own hands is vanishing. Only complete collapse of our people can follow from these irresponsible policies.
Thus we demand the right of work and a decent living for every working German.
While the front soldier was fighting in the trenches to defend his fatherland, some Eastern Jewish profiteer robbed him of hearth and home. The Jew lives in the palaces and the proletarian, the front soldier, lives in holes that do not deserve to be called “homes.” That is neither necessary nor unavoidable, but rather an injustice that cries out to the heavens. A government that stands by and does nothing is useless and must vanish, the sooner the better.
Therefore we demand homes for German soldiers and workers. If there is not enough money to build them, drive the foreigners out so that Germans can live on German soil.
Our people is growing, others diminishing. It will mean the end of our history if a cowardly and lazy policy takes from us the posterity that will one day be called to fulfill our historical mission.
Therefore we demand land on which to grow the grain that will feed our children.
While we dreamed and chased strange and unreachable fantasies, others stole our property. Today some say this was an act of God. Not so. Money was transferred from the pockets of the poor to the pockets of the rich. That is cheating, shameless, vile cheating!
A government presides over this misery that in the interests of peace and order one cannot really discuss. We leave it to others to judge whether it represents Germany’s interests or those of our capitalist tormenters.
We however demand a government of national labor, statesmen who are men and whose aim is the creation of a German state.
These days anyone has the right to speak in Germany — the Jew, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the League of Nations, the conscience of the world, and the Devil knows who else. Everyone but the German worker. He has to shut up and work. Every four years he elects a new set of torturers, and everything stays the same. That is unjust and treasonous. We need tolerate it no longer. We have the right to demand that only Germans who build this state may speak, those whose fate is bound to the fate of their fatherland.
Therefore we demand the destruction of the system of exploitation! Up with the German worker’s state!
Germany for the Germans!
