Volkish Is A Worldview
“Like in a big house with many children…It is so heartwarming and provides a great sense of security and satisfaction. A sort of grand-scale brotherhood. In the spirit of the Volk…frontline soldiers. Under the sign of the swastika.” “Cold shivers” ran up and down his spine as he stood before the National Theatre during the closing ceremonies and saw men from all parts of the Reich march with swastika flags past the leaders, heard the songs of the movement ring out, and listened to stirring farewell speeches that were interrupted by resounding cries of “Heil!” whenever Hitler’s name was pronounced.
After the volkisch and the National Socialists had joined to form the precarious, ideologically splintered National Socialist Freedom Movement of Greater Germany (NSFB) under the leadership of Graefe, Ludendorff, and Gregor Strasser, Goebbels wrote a sort of summation of his time in Weimar: “For me the volkisch question is linked with all questions of the spirit and religion. I’m beginning to think in volkischterms. This has nothing to do with politics; this is a worldview.”
Buoyed up by belief in his “higher calling,” Goebbels thenceforth placed himself at the service of that worldview, which he depicted in his articles for the Volkische Freiheit as “flowing from the social experience of the twentieth century” and the “grandiose attempt to resolve the social question through national means.” Together with Prang, on August 21st1924 he founded a Gladbach chapter of the NSFB. During the first meetings in Rheydt, Prang or Goebbels introduced the small audience to volkisch National Socialist thinking. Between meetings the two of them hurried from one discussion session to the next, whether organized by a volkisch group, by Social Democrats, or by Communists. Even a run-in with the Belgian occupation officials and a stern interrogation could not deter Goebbels form throwing all his energy into recruiting supporters. “We, the apostles of the new idea, must awaken the people. Germany must rouse itself from its slumber.”
-excerpted from “Goebbels” by Ralph Georg Reuth