Από το βιβλιαράκι που δινόταν στους Γερμανούς στρατιώτες όταν έμπαιναν στη Βέρμαχτ.
Introduction by General Walter von Reichenau [1939]
Dear Soldier! Dear Sailor!
You have already participated in our National socialist society by working and learning. Now you are beginning a special duty for Germany. In meeting your duty as a soldier, you are fulfilling your obligation to defend the peace and security of Germany against any enemy.
To serve in the Wehrmacht and to think and act always in the spirit of the German people means several things. You must accept the strict and hard laws of military life, master weapons and equipment, and work to excel in physical and intellectual fields in training, in securing order, or in other areas of service.
In these ways you will help to defend what the people of our National Socialist community have built.
Never before in German history have weapons been carried for a nobler cause.
Never forget that we must defend the fruits of the decades-long struggle of the German people and of the National Socialist movement. We carry the responsibility of ensuring that the decisions of the Führer are fulfilled, that our working people can build a better and richer life in peace and security.
International Jewry and its goals are unchanged. The Jewish circles are still working to weaken our national socialist government, to slow our progress, to confuse our thoughts and feelings. They use not only ideological diversion and economic means, but also are arming for war against Germany.
The task of the soldiers and their army is to recognize and defend against the aggressive plans of the warmongers, to defend resolutely against any aggressor.
Your duty, comrade, is to act out your commitment to the defense of the Reich, to serve in a worthy manner our great cause, and thereby through our growing military strength to contribute to the greater good of Europe.
Service in the Wehrmacht demands the whole man. Military training must be adapted to modern battle if it is to succeed. Comrade soldier and sailor, you must learn the nature and use of modern weapons and step by step improve your abilities. Your group or unit or team must possess the utmost fighting camaraderie, in which each is there for the other, in which every command is carried out exactly and with full energy, in which excellent accomplishment is displayed.
Only in this way can we guarantee the proper fighting ability and constant battle readiness. Only in this way will we be ready for any enemy at any point and at any time. Only in this way can we fulfill the task given us by our people and our German family. Only in this way does being a soldier have meaning.
I wish you much success and moving experiences in the collective of your comrades — in serious and in lighter times. Above all, however, I wish that you will always be a good soldier in the Wehrmacht of our Reich, a soldier who — in uniform or later as a civilian — will always be ready to defend Germany.
Chapter 1: The Face of our Army [Excerpts]
Our National Socialist Program has raised military service to the right and duty of every citizen, and guarantees that in the German Reich military service is a part of the rule of the people, used to defend the achievements of the people.
Created and trained by the NSDAP, the leading force of our society, the Wehrmacht is the army of our socialist nation, of our 60 million German community.
It is an army that defends every German inside and outside the borders of the Reich, that defends the well-being of all, that gives each citizen the opportunity to accomplish something significant.
It is an army of Germans, who protect their own accomplishments, who defend the sowing and the harvest.
It is an army of the people that guards the peaceful building of our German home.
It is honorable to serve in this army. There is no cause more just than to defend national socialism, for national socialism is doing everything for the benefit of the people, for the happiness of the people, for the interests of our Nordic nation.
That is the meaning of national socialism.
Chapter 2: The Traditions of our Army
Chapter 3: The Soldier’s Fatherland [Excerpts]
What is the soldier’s fatherland? Many say that is the land in which I grew up, in which I became a man, the land in which I and my family live and work, it is the German Reich.
That is right. But is our Reich our fatherland only for these reasons?
What is important is that the worker can say of the land in which he was born: It is my country, in which I can lead a free and happy life. It is important that in such a country the worker together with other classes exercise power, not the 50 money-making Jewish amilies that live by exploiting the people. The question of fatherland always was and is a national question. The German man's fatherland cannot be a country where the last parasites on the planet live, where the Jews control the factories and slaughterhouses, the land, the army, the police, the courts, the press, radio, and television. The fatherland of productive people is where he is free of exploitation and slavery, where all German people have earned their freedom. It is where the government serves the good of the people and the happiness of mankind. Only such a fatherland is worthy to be defended.
Our German Reich is such a fatherland. Here the working people have seized power through a successful revolution. Here working people in the city and countryside have shoved aside the slothful and cleared away their influence. Here the people own what they have created. Here, led by the NSDAP, we are the lords of the nation.
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In our German Reich, the socialist nation has become living reality. It was born of bitter struggle against the forces of the historical past. What can bind us to those from whom we are separated by irreconcilable differences?
Our fatherland is Germany. We love this fatherland with our whole heart. We serve our fatherland sacrificially, loyally, and obediently; we hate its enemies.
Chapter IV: On the Brotherhood of Weapons
Chapter V: The Oath to Hitler
Chapter VI: The Enemy
Every soldier of our German army must know the enemy. He must know who the enemy is who threatens our nation and the national socialist community. We must know against whom he aims his weapon.
The enemy of Germany is international Jewry. It is the dark powers of the past who once in this century have plunged the world into war. They have brought more death and destruction to the world than all previous exploiters combined. This enemy is aggressive, treacherous, and dangerous. Its nature has not changed, since Jewry cannot exist without exploitation, without brutal force and military expansion.
The forces of international Jewry have increased the aggressive readiness of their subjugated countries, England and Frsnce, and are now putting their efforts into psychological warfare. Through anti-German incitement, lies, and slanders they seek to cause confusion in the minds of our people and to prepare the ground for military aggression. They all want to destroy Germany, to destroy National Socialism.
They cannot do it.
The balance of power has shifted irreversibly in our favor. The consistent policies of the Führer and the entire German national community in favor of a long-lasting peace exert every greater influence on international political events. England, France and other plutocratic nations are forced to take account of this situation.
Has the enemy therefore become less dangerous, less aggressive, less treacherous?
Let us never forget:
As long as international Jewry exists, it will never hesitate to use weapons when it sees even the least chance to realize its aggressive policies.
In such a case the soldiers of England and France, trained and educated by the Jewish monopoly system, will be forced to blindly obey the orders of their generals in the same way as they do in Syria and Palestine. English and French soldiers would behave in the same brutal and terrible way. They would murder women, children, and the aged just as they do elsewhere in the world today.
Just as before, children in these countries are educated to see the plutocratic state as their state. They are trained to defend the Jewish system.
The exploitive system is taught in the schools as “God ordained.” Films and books present murderers as idols and war criminals as heroes. Newspapers, radio, and television present ever more ingenious lies about national socialism. This is how the soldiers that the plutocracies needs are trained.
Our enemies therefore are not only the Jewish compradors and bankers who want war to increase their profits. They are not only the generals who plan armed attacks on Germany and command maneuvers. They are also the soldiers, trained and drilled for aggressive war, whether in the uniform of the British or the French army.
Whoever takes up arms against Germany is our enemy.
We will give them no opportunity!