The European Front

Thank you to Wayland Smith of the TPS Forum for translating this from the German original; ‘The European Front’, February 1944 Issue, SS Leitheft, 10. Jahrgang – Heft 2/1944

The harder the current war hits the people of Europe, the greater the energies it awakens in these people and sets in motion. Outdated conceptions of the state evaporate under the shock of this war, as if they had never been. The contrived state of the Treaty of Versailles lies in ruin, and a new age is born in grief and tears. We ourselves are just a wave in the flood that sets the peoples of Europe in motion. The ideas of race and socialism shake Europeans, thrusting them into a new order of life under the state. 

Under the force of Bolshevism’s lust for expansion and fiendish enemy bombing raids, Europeans move closer together, and a sense of community emerges that was never known in times of so- called “prosperity”. It would be wrong to compare the present with the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Back then, waves of revolution broke against an outdated, idea-free Europe under the leadership of the reactionary Chancellor Metternich, and shattered the hollow untenable system of entangled European nations under Austrian leadership. 

Today’s Europe is not in a mode of mere conservation and defense of the past. Conscious of its Germanic tradition, it shatters outdated national boundaries, uniting peoples that have long since belonged together on the basis of historical facts. The old world is championed by enemy forces in both West and East. Capitalism and Marxism are the crumbling frame of a decrepit conception of life’s purpose and the value of man. The new Europe rides on the momentum of the revolutionary idea of socialism and race. All at once, Europe churns in a state of attack and defense – on the attack because it counterposes a better world to the moribund and outdated. Socialism is not only the political philosophy of the Reich, that seeks a human order on the basis of achievement, but contains – supra-nationally – the program of a reorganization of the European peoples on the basis of the free development of their national values and on the basis of their historical achievement. 

The power of the Idea of a Reich 

In the ranks of the Waffen-SS today Dutch, Flemings and Walloons, Scandinavians, Estonians and Latvians are fighting, and soon other peoples will dress their awakened youth in the same tunic to form the European Front under the sign of the SS, born out of necessity in this hour, to bring forth the foundation of a new European order. Any who doubted the power of an idea will be convinced by the sight of Dutchmen or Estonians in the Waffen-SS today, who are more fanatical and determined supporters of the Idea of the Reich than many Germans inside the Reich itself. Experience proves that the use of these men in the East forges and tempers the Reich’s ideology. 

The men fighting the Bolsheviks alongside the Reich German SS have left all prejudice behind which still holds back their peers, who do not share their experience of heavy fighting on the Eastern front. In combat with our heaviest opponent, the idea of the Reich is reborn in radiant splendor. A European sense of community emerges, leaving behind the petty concerns of politicians still snared in the old idea of the state. These European SS volunteer leaders and Reich SS men are the vanguard of the European front. They love their homeland, and because they love their homes, and are faithful at heart, they fight for the reward of a new world ordered by a strong Reich to vouchsafe their nations and preserve the living essence of their people. Of course, these men are minorities among their own countrymen. But world history is always made by a few men who have the courage to dare something unprecendented. Apprehensive men always follow later. 

One has only to examine the family history of such a volunteer in order to feel how powerful the idea of the Reich is for these youth. There is Flaine, for example – a Flemming. He fights in the ranks of the Waffen-SS. His father is a high Belgian colonial official in English service, while his grandfather was a member of the Belgian Parliament, a fanatical representative of French culture against the Flemish opposition of his own homeland. The grandson is committed to the Reich and to Adolf Hitler. What a break with the old era declares itself in this young man! What attraction has the personality of the Fuhrer! How powerful is the blood and the idea of the Reich, that the young men of these nations declare their willingness to die for this Reich their forefathers lived estranged from for decades, even centuries! 

The European task of the SS 

The SS is growing more and more into its European role. It gathers the awakened European youth in the struggle against Bolshevism and Jewish plutocracy. Anyone who believes that the SS volunteer forfeits their original character or abandons the strict principles of the race has no understanding of the revolutionary idea of National Socialism, one that transcends national borders. No man in Europe today believes, whatever the outcome of the war, in a return of the artificial state system of Versailles, which owes its existence solely to English interference in European affairs. 

It is understandable that the impact of this war erases that fraud of a historical development, only a few decades old, revealing the common roots of the European family of peoples now ascendant. The fact of the Germanic migration and the former Germanic settlement, from the Baltic and the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and North Africa, established the unity of Europe, inscribed in blood, bringing forth what we now call European culture. The reordering of these peoples happens on the same basis. 

America and England have no real program for a reorganization of states on the European continent. Today, they only see Europe as a colony for economic exploitation. Bolshevism has no new ideas to offer Europe. Marxism has no concept of or concern for the Folk, any more than it can include the concept of blood in its dictionary. National Socialism alone affirms the roots of every true European Folk. Our movement recognizes that only he who is faithful to his homeland can be faithful to the Reich. 

The revolutionary socialism of Adolf Hitler means for Europe not only a regulation of the relations between capital and labor, but also a regulation of the relationship of the European peoples to one another on the basis of their historical achievement and their engagement in the present struggle. From the world-view of this movement alone springs the creative power and rich abundance of ties between the Folk and nations of Europe to the leadership of a strong Reich. One must clearly see that an inner and outer order of Europe can only spring from the depths of the National Socialist understanding of history. 

The SS is already forming the iron ring of men who, with passionate zeal, struggle together for the reorganization of Europe under the leadership of a strong Germanic center. Without the contribution of these men, the new cannot emerge. Our continent is racked by a violent fever; these are the birth pangs of a new era that wants to emerge on the basis of the blood community: a European family of nations, and a socialist order of coexistence. 

No matter which path fate sets for us towards that goal, and which setbacks we will have to endure, the goal itself remains fixed. It’s the only goal worth living and fighting for. The SS knows every resource of the Folk must be martialed, so that our comrades in the European East grow as one into a combat community with those from the West. Intelligent treatment of humans and a great measure of skill is required to achieve this goal. The SS remains uncompromising in its principles, creative and generous in the accomplishment of practical tasks. It must be agile enough to treat every race according to its nature and history. 

Our job must be to unite European youth into a tough and determined front. The Western enemy is unwilling to die for a higher world because he cannot conceive of it. The enemy in the East has so far offered only oppression and defilement. If there are inviolable human values, then they are defended by the front of the German army. On our side stands the new idea. The scales of fate have to weigh down on our side one day, but only if we stand firm and mindful of the broad historical responsibility of this struggle.