Sabotage

Much is happening in Naziland behind the cloak of secrecy and censorship which points to a steady disintegration of the National Socialist Party and to the abandonment of nearly all of the twenty-five points of its famous “unalterable” program. A second purge, less bloody than the first, but under the same pretext of cleansing the party of its moral perverts, is on. The Reichswehr is determined to reduce both the S. S. and the S. A. to a position of political impotence—and the Reichswehr is now in the saddle. Opposition to the policies of Ruhrized Hitler who has thrown overboard every article of the Nazi plat form (except its anti-Semitism) and has left it nothing but the chauvinist rhapsody which has turned sour—is being ruthlessly suppressed but cannot be destroyed.

The economics of Nazism which had such a large element of Socialism in it went down to final defeat at the hands of that stalwart champion of old-time capitalism (with all of its knavery and jockeyship)—the present financial dictator of Germany, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. The symbol of this defeat is the elimination and total eclipse of Gottfried Feder, the real papa of Nazi economics, the author of that famous antithesis of “raffendes” and “schaffendes” capital, which so enthralled the mind of Hitler. They made Feder ride in a tumbril to a dry guillotine….

German stock exchanges and banks have not been nationalized nor have the great trusts. The profits of the large concerns in Germany have not been distributed. “Interest slavery” has not been outlawed. Even the department stores remain. The economic salvation which the Nazis promised the German people has not materialized. Unemployment has not been abolished nor reduced, only camouflaged. Wages have fallen sharply. The cost of living has risen. Germany’s export trade is crippled. Her shortage of raw materials is menacing.

The German people are coming to realize that the great national awakening by which they had been beguiled has turned out to be a miserable coup at their own expense and in the interest of their age-old unconscionable exploiters. Some day soon the real national awakening will take place in Germany and an outraged and embittered people will arise in its unleashed wrath and wreak its vengeance upon its lying prophets, the physical and intellectual perverts who misled them and all the bloody hirelings of Junkerdom and big business who tricked, robbed and degraded them—and terrible will be that day of reckoning!…

That day is sure to come; and all those, within and without Germany, who help to undermine that unspeakable regime are making a major contribution to civilization. The economic pressure upon Germany by way of an organized, directed and intensified world-wide economic boycott is the surest way of undermining this regime. Those who directly or indirectly, by word or act, contribute to any relaxation of this economic pressure are rendering a distinct dis-service to the cause of civilization.

A favorite dodge among certain Jewish leaders who want to provide themselves with an accident insurance policy in their fight against Hitlerism is to proclaim a distinction between an unorganized, unofficial and private boycott which in their minds is legitimate and praiseworthy and an organized boycott which is altogether blameworthy and which should be abandoned.

To some this may appear as subtle and profound diplomacy. In reality it is nothing but a camouflage for cold feet…. It is sheer futile and swivel-chair dialectics. You cannot fight Hitlerism with hushed and muted indignation and with little private pinpricks when nobody is looking…. The only real difference is the one between an effective and a non-effective boycott! A private, unorganized, undirected boycott is sure to be ineffective. An organized, planned and directed boycott might be effective.

If a man is so greatly persuaded that a boycott of Nazi Germany is morally justified and politically wise that he “will not buy five cents worth of German goods,” then he certainly should want to tell others about it. He should not keep it hidden as a great secret in his bosom. He should want to explain to everyone why it is necessary to boycott German goods. He should seek to merge his single act with those of others into a powerful collective action which might get results.

It is not clear how an organized boycott “interferes with the commercial transactions of one’s country” and indicates that one has permitted “his emotions as a Jew to interfere with his duty as an American citizen,” while a private, unorganized and whispering boycott, if effective, does not “interfere with the commercial transactions of one’s country” and does not indicate that one has allowed his emotions as a Jew to “interfere with his duty as an American citizen.” This stale, “patriotic” argument, has the smell of Captain Max Neumann about it….

We are in the midst of a war! Nazism has declared war upon us in every part of the world. It is out to destroy us politically, economically and socially. It is pouring its poison gas over all the habitations of Israel. World Jewry has established its front line of defense —just as England has—on the Rhine…. We must fight it out along that line if it takes a generation. We must stand in the muck and the cold, the filth and the nastiness of this war which is not of our choosing until Nazism is destroyed. Jewish leaders would do well not to stab our fighting forces in the back….

Of Course our principal defense lies in our appeal to the fundamental concepts of justice, freedom and human equality. But when these are brutally rejected in one country or another and our rights are trampled under foot, those countries must know that we will not lightly surrender our hard-won rights. We will do more than appeal. We will fight back with every means which the law of life and of survival makes mandatory upon self-respecting men. Our persecutors must learn that they will not escape unscathed.

It is intolerable that fifteen million people should everlastingly be made the easy victims of the hired agents of decaying economic classes, or the charlatans of special privilege, or of embittered chauvinists or of breeds of excitable morons whom the Ho-jo-to-ho of irresponsible propagandists turns into pogromists.

If the law of the land will not safeguard the right of citizens to remain in their homeland and to enjoy the full privileges of citizenship, then other methods must be employed to safeguard them. To refuse to fight for them with every forceful and legitimate weapon, is to betray not only the Jewish cause but the cause of humanity itself.