An obscure German Christian Democrat, Martin Hohmann, made a speech in his home town on 'German National Day' (3rd October). It does not appear that he was courting notoriety. Thousands of speeches are made in all corners of Germany and few are reported in the wider world.

Hohmann's speech was not reported. No notice was taken of it until an American, trawling through the Internet with some purpose in mind, found it on Hohmann's website and drew attention to it in the appropriate quarters. The Israeli Ambassador demanded that Hohmann should resign his Parliamentary seat. It was then demanded that the Christian Democratic Union should expel him. The CDU leader, Angela Merkel, did expel him from the Parliamentary Party. She has begun a procedure to expel him from Party membership. Protests against these measures poured into CDU headquarters. The Israeli Ambassador said: "It is not yet anchored in German consciousness that anti-Semitism is a societal problem".

There are two elements in Hohmann's speech. One of them is the kind of thing that leaders of the British Labour Party in days gone by used to condemn as racist and xenophobic when Tories gave utterance to it, but which David Blunkett now says in his capacity as Home Secretary every other day. The other element is a piece of historical observation about things that were done over half a century ago. Insofar as Hohmann's speech can be described as racist, the racism lies in the first element. But no objection has been made to his remarks about spongers and foreigners, because this view of things is at least as prevalent in Britain as in Germany, having been made respectable by the refugees from ultra-left Socialism who took over the Labour Party after the death of John Smith. All position is relative and the position of the extremist Right of the Tory Party, as exemplified by Michael Howard a few years ago, has become a moderate centrist position by being outflanked on the right by the ex-Marxist Jack Straw in the first instance, and now by the Christian Socialist, David Blunkett, who has easily outstripped Straw in the use of Right-wing rhetoric about "swamping" by foreigners. The really objectionable part of Hohmann's speech is the part that he might have made at a Labour Party Conference.

The other element, which led to his expulsion, is his observation that Jews were disproportionately active in the Bolshevik Party, and in the exterminating activities of the Bolshevik regime. That observation has been denounced as anti-Semitism. It has not been argued that it is a false observation—that Hohmann is mistaken. What makes it inexcusable for him to say it, is the fact that it is true. If it is felt necessary to rebut it—and the Jewish nationalist movement clearly feels that it is necessary to rebut it—the only way to do it is to stop the operations of the mind with regard to it with the mind-boggling charge of anti-Semitism. It cannot be demonstrated that it is not a fact—it can only be made into a fact that must not be thought about. It is dealt with in the way that awkward facts are dealt with in totalitarian cultures—it is placed beyond the reach of thought by means of taboos and punishments.

The fact that Jews were grossly over-represented in the Bolshevik leadership, proportional to population, was common knowledge back in those times when Europe was a welter of Communism, Fascism, ultra-democracy, French nationalism and British Imperialism—the 1920s and 1930s. And it was not only those who are now thought of as anti-Semites who attributed profound significance to it. Churchill was an active supporter of the Zionist movement for the purpose of diverting Jewish political energy from Bolshevism, which was subverting European civilisation as he saw it, to colonising and civilising (i.e. Westernising) activity in Palestine. Jewish energy would either go into subverting Europe in Europe, or into making Palestine an outpost of Europe by subjugating the Arabs—Churchill was not mealy-mouthed in the way he said things.

Churchill might be fairly described as an anti-Semite, as might Balfour of the Balfour Declaration, even though these are the great English heroes of the Zionist movement. The English ogre of Zionist mythology is Ernest Bevin. Bevin is presented as the great English anti-Semite precisely because he did not share the anti-Semitic assumptions of Balfour and Churchill. They wanted to get rid of the Jews out of Britain because they exerted a dissolving influence on the national culture and this led necessarily to the rise of popular anti-Jewish sentiment on conservative grounds. But Bevin did not see the Jews as an obnoxious people. He did not see them as a people at all, but as a religion whose members had a place in the nation alongside the members of other religions. They saw anti-Semitism as a necessary objective condition that came about when the Jewish people increased above a very small proportion of the population of the state. He saw anti-Semitism as a residue of religious prejudice which would disappear with enlightenment. They were active Zionists for the purpose of getting rid of the Jews out of Britain, or at least whittling down their number. He had no desire to get rid of the Jews; he saw the establishment of a Jewish state as reversion towards mediaevalism; and, because he had no ulterior motive in the matter, he saw the Zionist colonising project for what it was. Therefore he was the great anti-Semite.

The meaning of anti-Semitism was reversed by the rise of Zionism to hegemony over the Jewish population at large in the world by developments following on from the Balfour Declaration. Prior to 1917 the basic anti-Semitism position was that the Jews were a people—a nation. After 1917 it came to be that the Jews were a religious group and not a nation. Bevin became the great anti-Semite because, having countered anti-Semitism as a religious prejudice all his life, he refused as Foreign Secretary to authorise the establishment of a state which only made sense if his anti-Semitic opponents were right and anti-Semitism was not the prejudice of religious backwardness but the recognition of a social reality.

The first opponents of the Balfour Declaration were Jews who had become English, who saw Zionism as a surrender to anti-Semitic prejudice, and who saw that the establishment of a Jewish State by colonisation and conquest in Palestine would inevitably lead to a resurgence of Judaic fundamentalism even though many of its projectors were virtual atheists.

The first English propagandist for Zionism, Manchester Guardian journalist Herbert Sidebotham, obviously shared these apprehensions. He described the aggressive fundamentalism of the earlier Jewish states, over two thousand years ago, as making them intolerable to their neighbours, but thought a tolerable Jewish state might be constructed in the 20th century under British Imperial guidance and as a component of the British Empire. That possibility was never put to the test. The British Empire somehow undermined itself in its final bid for world domination in the 1914-18 War, even though it won that War, or was at least on the winning side. Large-scale colonisation of Palestine was set in motion against Palestinian opposition, the Jewish Agency was treated as an embryo Government while the native majority was shackled, and in the end the Jewish state was established through Jewish terrorism against the British administration and the Palestinians—terrorism supported by the USA and its client states in South America, the Soviet Union and its puppet states in Eastern Europe, and European Governments seeking to purge their own guilt for what had been done to the Jews in Europe during the Second World War by sacrificing the Palestinians to colonial Jewish nationalism—one holocaust in recompense for another. (Of course this was done with a decent amount of obfuscation and 'double-effect' casuistry, but the reality was always easily discernible.)

Half a century on we are told that anti-Semitism has become rampant in Europe once more, and that we must not think—or at least must not say—that this has anything to do with Jewish nationalist activity in the Middle East and the support for this activity by most Jews around the world.

If European anti-Semitism is reaching crisis proportions, and it is unconnected with Zionism, this refutes Ernie Bevin and supports Balfour and Churchill in their assumption that there is something in the Jewish mode of existence which gives rise to serious popular hostility towards Jews when they become a discernible collective presence within a European nationality. This was also Hitler's assumption, of course, and in his final utterances in April 1945 he said something to the effect that he had at least done Europe the service of sorting out its Jewish problem for the time being, but that it would inevitably recur. One of the great difficulties European civilisation has with Hitler is that he was in so many ways its characteristic product—and Churchill recognised him, along with Mussolini, as one of its saviours from Bolshevism.

The great division in world Jewry after the Great War was actually in the lines seen by Churchill—Between Bolshevism (and other socialist positions verging on Bolshevism), and Zionism. Insofar as Jews actively resisted Zionist hegemony, it tended to be on the basis of something like a Bolshevik position—a socialist position whose internationalism was something more than conventional rhetoric.

Socialists on the whole tended to be nationalist in their assumptions. Their operative mental horizon was set by the nation state. That is plainly evident in the conduct of English socialists in the critical period of the British declaration of war on Germany in 1914 and the way things were sorted out in the aftermath of that war. The operative mental horizon of Jews was on the whole much less closely determined by the nationalism of the states where they happened to be. They did not on the whole participate subjectively in the nationalism of the states or peoples surrounding them, even when they complied with all the formal requirements of their surroundings. (An attempted rapprochement between Poles and Jews on the ground of the romance of Polish nationalism in the 1860s came to nothing.)

Even if Jews are understood to be a distinct nation rather than a religion, they were a nation dispersed among other nations. And, with regard to those other nations, their disposition tended to be internationalist. (The case is naturally quite different when it comes to the Jewish nationalist state, with a very few exceptions.)

The Bolsheviks were the Socialists who took the slogans of internationalism most in earnest. And it might be said in that regard that the Jews were natural Bolsheviks. If others had become Bolshevik in the same proportion as the Jews, Bolshevism would have been well night irresistible.

Extermination was practised by Bolshevism as a social method long before it was adopted by Fascism. It was not until the war between Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia that extermination was practised on a large scale by any Fascist state.

Extermination became a delicate issue when it was adopted as a method by a political force hostile to British/American/West European capitalist civilisation. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, it was taken for granted that extermination was justified in the name of progress, and might even be a moral obligation. Only a short while before 1917—only a generation—the second-in-command of the Liberal Party under Gladstone, Sir Charles Dilke, published a very popular book called Greater Britain in which he boasted that the English were the greatest exterminating race the world had ever seen. The statement caused no great outcry of horror.

Large-scale extermination in peacetime by the forces of Liberalism in the cause of progress continued right up to 1917. All Bolshevism did in that regard was take up from Liberalism the procedure of exterminating in the cause of progress. Fascism then arose as a means of defending liberal civilisation in the cause of progress, and was supported on that basis by pillars of liberal society such as Churchill.

Churchill was the best of his class and his kind in the post-1918 era, and the tragedy is that he did not come to power until Britain had made a total mess of the world over which it had achieved dominance in 1918. He knew that the Second world War was a historical absurdity. By the time he came to office it could be nothing but a war in alliance with the fundamental enemy, Bolshevism, against the political force which had saved liberal civilisation in Europe from Bolshevism—Fascism. This was the outcome of what was one of the greatest pieces of foreign policy bungling on record.

Churchill had wanted to do in 1919 what Germany did in 1941—make war on Russia as the stronghold of Bolshevism—and to do it with defeated Germany as an ally, instead of plundering and humiliating it. And that is the policy he wanted to implement as soon as Germany was defeated. But he lost office before he could attempt it. And, in any case, Britain had lost the power to act independently in such an undertaking, having become a dependency of the USA. And, by the time America was willing to act against it, Russia had become a nuclear power.

Churchill announced the strategy of fundamental antagonism with the state which had destroyed Nazi Germany and enabled Britain to survive the bungled, equivocating war that it declared in 1939. What followed was a 45-year stand-off.

The wartime alliance—and the obvious fact that Russia had fought the substance of the war that Britain had launched—resulted in there being in British public life, particularly in the Universities and the Trade Unions, an influential stratum sympathetic to Soviet Russia. There was within British public opinion a stand-off corresponding with the stand-off between the states. Robert Conquest and others churned out their astronomical figures about the scale of the Bolshevik exterminations, while others dealt with them as figures about British liberal exterminations had been dealt with—as costs of progress, which were necessary since progress was necessary, but which it was healthier not to dwell on too much.

And then the Soviet Union collapsed under the strain of the Cold War. And the public opinion sympathetic to it, or understanding of it, evaporated overnight—the Churchillians reasserted Churchill's fundamentalist view, that Bolshevism had from the start been nothing but a criminal conspiracy against civilisation—a monstrosity that needed to be wiped out without trace. And, once that view was reasserted after the Soviet collapse, no public figure of any eminence disputed it, and no historian reviewed British foreign policy or reviewed the British foreign policy in 1939-45 in the light of this new, and generally agreed, value system.

The historical implication of this generally agreed position—agreed by the entire spectrum of political life manifested in Parliament and publishing—is that Bolshevism was the fundamental evil of the 20th century, and that Fascism was a means of defence of liberal civilisation which got out of hand because of the way the situation was mishandled by British foreign policy when Britain was the dominant state in that world.

Prior to 1990 the disproportionate Jewish participated in Bolshevism could be regarded with a kind of pride as another expression of the Jewish position in the vanguard of progress. But, if Bolshevism is to be regarded as a criminal conspiracy to destroy civilisation by means of exterminations, it must be regarded in some other way. But in what other way? That is the question posed by Hohmann. And it is a relevant question.

Of course Hohmann shouldn't have raised it, because Germans aren't allowed to think. They are only allowed to say "Mea culpa" unceasingly unto the seventh generation. And the Jews at least cannot be condemned visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons and grandsons, because God told them that that is His way with these things.

But why on earth are the Germans allowed to have a National Day if they are not allowed to think about themselves? It only encourages them to say something which is bound to be wrong. And then somebody rattles their chain and the conditioned reflex sends them scurrying back into their cage.

Fourteen years ago the Speaker of the Federal Parliament made a speech of unreserved condemnation of Nazism on the half-centenary of Kristalnacht. He was denounced as an anti-Semite because he gave some explanation of why the Germans had voted for Hitler and he had to resign.

The Germans are exhorted to confront the truth about themselves—or about their fathers and grandfathers. But whenever they try to do so they are denounced.

If the Germans are not allowed to think about themselves, Germany should be broken up—as France wanted to do in 1919, and as Adenauer was willing to do.

Saying Mea Culpa is not thinking. In fact it is not doing anything at all. But, as Hegel said, the mind just can't help thinking. And, even though the Speaker scurried back into the cage in 1989, it is evident from Hohmann's speech that thought has been occurring underground. The Speaker could not conceivably have posed the questions that Hohmann poses. The Federal Republic was strictly mindless then in these matters.

Hohmann does not say that the Jews are a "perpetrator people" (a strange term but the meaning is obvious). He is replying to Daniel Goldhagen's book accusing the Germans as a whole of genocide. He says the Jews are no more a "perpetrator people" than the Germans, even though a certain proportion of each of them took part in exterminating activities.

He does not mention Jewish activity in the way of colonisation and conquest in Palestine. But it is a realistic assumption that he would not have asked his awkward questions if Germany had not been required to support, politically and financially, the Jewish conquest of Palestine while saying nothing of its own former activities of a similar kind but Mea Culpa.

Justice For Germany
(From website of Neuhof CDU)

We will consider several ideas about our people and its somewhat difficult relationship with itself, in connection with the theme of "Justice for Germany". We will not waste too much time on superficial phenomena. But it is noteworthy that many Germans are concerned that a Turkish instigator of murder, after serving his custodial sentence, cannot be deported to his Turkish homeland. A German court interprets German law to the effect that the so-called Caliph of Cologne sees himself forced, not to return to Turkey, but to further draw German social assistance.

A boulevard paper discovers the case of Miami Rolf. This penniless German pensioner gets his living expenses, rent and cost of cleaning lady from the Lower Saxon State Social Security Office. The Euro 1,425 a month is sent to sunny Florida. That is entirely legal these days for, under Section 119 of the Federal Social Assistance Act, German citizens may receive social assistance abroad when there there is good reason not to return. Expert psychiatric testimony established that Rolf J. is better preserved in his "accustomed surroundings" in Florida. His American friends can provide a better "safety net" for him there.

A short time ago a District Administration in Hesse was thundered at not to refuse on principle the potency drug, Viagra, to a 54 year old recipient of social welfare. With regard to these cases, the Free Word of Suhl writes: "Yesterday it was Viagra out of the State trough, but today it is Germany-allergy". The Oldenburg North West Paper recommends: "Germans leave your work, off to Paradise". Appositely, the Deister & Weser Paper remarks: "Rage and anger boil up".

Many of you know of similar cases of unashamed exploitation of the generosity of the German social state and of the many opportunities for recourse to law opened up by the Justice system. And, as a rule, this is done with no bad conscience by the kind of individual formerly described as a sponger. Well-meaning social politicians of all colours have lent great weight to this mentality. It could even be said that they have made it be taken for granted. Meanwhile it is forgotten that what Social Assistance Offices dispense must first be hard earned by others, or loaded onto the public debt of the younger generation. Rights and duties are out of balance, with the rights of the individual raised and duties lowered. How many people in Germany now take account in their plans and behaviour of whether they serve the community as well as themselves, of whether they are bringing the country forward?

There is no doubt that the idea of "us"—relationship to the community—must be strengthened. This tough exercise is expressly required of us at a time of economic stagnation. The number of cutbacks made so far is not small. One need be no prophet to see that even more will be needed in the future. The majority of the population does not exclude a policy of economy. Nevertheless one thing is demanded: there must be fairness. When unsuccessful managers have given themselves settlements of millions, going up to two-digits, that is beyond comprehension, and not just of the involuntarily unemployed. Well, such settlements could be regarded as abuses of the so-called capitalist system and be excused as following the United States example. However, many Germans sense injustices particularly with regard to their own State. They feel that, as Germans, they are treated worse than others. Fulfilling civic duties, working hard, raising children brings no praise in Germany: that is the mug's game, at the expense of whom the chronically skint State fills its empty coffers.

Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot escape the suspicion that there is no preferential treatment for Germans in Germany. On the contrary. I have posed three questions to the Federal Government:

1. In view of economic developments and the decline of State revenue, is the Federal Government prepared to reduce its contribution to the European Union? The answer was: German commitments to the EU will be maintained without cutbacks.

2. Is the Federal government prepared to recompense German forced labourers, since DM10 billion have been committed to foreign and Jewish forced labourers? The answer was: the two cases cannot be compared. Neither will the Federal Government seek from the Russian, Polish or Czech Governments any symbolic restitution or gesture of reparation for German forced labour.

3. In the light of economic developments and reduced tax receipts, is the Federal Government ready to tailor compensation payments under the Federal Compensation Act (that is, to—above all Jewish—victims of National Socialism) to the reduced ability to pay of the German State? The answer was: respect for the suffering then endured by these people demands that compensation levels remain unaffected.

These answers gave me food for thought. They confirm the view already widespread in our society: them first, then us. The subtle message is: make the payments to the foreign account in full and on time. Let the Germans pull in their belts a notch.

Quite frankly I would wish for a consensus, such as exists in many other countries in the world. There the consensus is: One's own State is there primarily for one's own citizens. If a preference for Germans does not seem possible or opportune, then I plead for at least equal treatment of Germans and foreigners.

On enquiring about the causes of this lop-sided situation, many answer: that's in German history.

Ladies and Gentlemen, no expert or thoughtful person can seriously contemplate whitewashing German history or obscuring it. No. We all know the devastating and unique deeds done at Hitler's bidding. Hitler as an agency for evil deeds, and with him Germans as such, have between them become the negative symbol of the last century. One speaks of a "past that will not pass". The phenomenon of Hitler also features disproportionately in public presentations. Thousands of rather indifferent films ensure that, particularly in Anglo-Saxon regions, the cliché of stupid, brutal and criminal German soldiers is retained and renewed.

To suggest that Germans too fell victim to foreign force on a large scale is to break the taboo. This is strikingly confirmed in moderate discussions about expulsions. Here the danger of setting these off against each other is conjured up. The responsibility of the Hitler regime in causing the Second World War is pointed to. Not long ago, Hans-Olaf Henkel, Vice-President of the Federal Union of German Industry, in an interview appositely pointed up the facts and consequences of taking this negative attitude to the past. He said: "Our original sin cripples the country" (Hör Zu/Listen 21.2.2003, p16ff).

We repeatedly experience the powerful impact right into the present day of the 12 years of the NS past. One might almost say that, as the Nazi dictatorship recedes, the effects of Hitler's evil spirit (Ungeist) exerts ever greater power. One cannot describe the turds made by his followers on the right extreme fringe of the political scene as harmless. However, their aggressive public behaviour as a rule repels, ensuring they get limited support in present-day, democratic Germany. From time to time German voters rebuff these empty heads at the polls, more so than occurs in comparable neighbouring countries. Seen in this light, the shattering of the ban on the NPD is an advantage, because it is not the Constitutional Court but German sovereignty, the electorate, which is giving its verdict about the brown offal.

The activity of this part of the Brown inheritance observable in current politics is one of the unpleasant but unavoidable consequences of a parliamentary democracy. The lunatic fringe at the left and right extremes of the political spectrum must be combatted politically and, where the criminal law is broken, judicially. Our State security organs have proved themselves by successfully combatting violent extremists, and at times of crisis, like the bloody RAF-terrorism of the 70s, won our trust.

It is not the brown hordes who gather around shattered symbols that are the real concern. The deep worry concerns our national consciousness: morale is being undermined at every turn by the after-effects of Hitler. The crime of the industrialised destruction of people, and particularly of the European Jews, occasioned by him, is a burden on German history. Ancestral guilt in this crime against humanity has almost led to a new self-definition by Germans. Despite the protestations on all sides that there is no collective guilt, despite new nuanced verbal expressions such as "collective responsibility" or "collective shame", in essence the reproach remains: the Germans are the "perpetrator people" (Tätervolk, perpetrator-people).

Every other nation rather inclines to shift the dark sides of their history into a more favourable light. Protective blinkers are put on over shameful events. The greatest example of re-interpretation is how the French Revolution is presented. Here is the great massacre in Paris and the provinces, particularly in the Vendee. Here is the linked taking of power by an autocrat, whose wars of conquest brought millions of deaths to Europe. Nevertheless the majority of commentators within France and beyond describe the revolution with its terror as an emancipating act and Napoleon as the mild and enlightened father of modern Europe.

No kind revision or reinterpretation of this nature is accorded to the Germans. It is vehemently opposed by the political class and academia which is currently dominant. They are "almost neurotically obstinate about German guilt" as Joachim Gauck put it on 1st October, 2003.

With almost neurotic zeal ever new generations of German scholars investigate the minutest ramifications of the NS-period.

It is a wonder that no one has proposed the renouncing of the use of knives and forks for, as is well-known, these instruments served to physically strengthen those perpetrators. The Germans as the perpetrator people. That has become an image of great impressive effect internationally. Against this the rest of the world has taken the part of the innocent sacrificial lambs—or at least relatively innocent. Anyone who does not unhesitatingly accept this clear division of roles—here the Germans, the most guilty ever; there the morally superior nations—is in for trouble. Trouble from precisely those who, with great personal success, made their principal occupation, as 68ers, "questioning fundamentals, criticising and exposing". As is well known, exposing brought several of these to the highest office.

My very honourable ladies and gentlemen, to avoid any misunderstanding: Like you I am for clarity and truth. It should, must, not be suppressed or denied. "Make no secret of the truth, if it brings suffering, it will not bring regret", says the poet. Yes, the unpleasant, the unbelievable, the shaming aspects of truth, that must be borne. We Germans have borne it, we have borne it for decades. But the question for many is whether the excess of truth about the criminal and fateful 12 years of NS-dictatorship are not

a) being instrumentalised and

b) could not, against the expectation of those teaching the people, be reversed into an inner warding-off attitude.

Over and over again the same evil truth: that can, that must, lead to direct psychic damage, as we know from re--socialisation psychology.

It is particularly bad when a US-American Junior-Professor (Daniel Jonah Goldhagen) designates, as the result of his work of enlightenment, our whole people as "murderers from birth onwards". This thesis, as shrill as it is false, has nevertheless brought him—particularly in Germany—media attention and author's honours. Other nations would ignore him with cold contempt.

And in fact younger people decline to be saddled with the transgressions of the grandfathers and greatgrandfathers or accept the verdict: "members of the perpetrator people".

What is undoubtedly certain is that the German people has concerned itself with the crimes of the Hitler period in a singular and unsparing manner, begged forgiveness, and contributed as much as it could, billions, in compensation, above all to the Jews. I am referring to the contracts between the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Israel under the leading personalities, Adenauer and Ben Gurion. The majority of Germans quite expressly agreed to the compensation agreed then, knowing that pain and death in immeasurable quantity can not be undone.

Against this background I put the provocative question: do the Jewish people, who we perceive exclusively in the role of victims, not also have a darker side in modern times, or were the Jews exclusively victims, bearing suffering?

Ladies and gentlemen, it will surprise you that the American car-king, Henry Ford, published a book in 1920 called, "The International Jew". 500,000 copies of this book were produced in the USA. It became a world best seller and was translated into 16 languages. Generalising in this book, Ford exposed the Jews as "world Bolsheviks". He made out a supposed "all-Jewish stamp on red Russia", where the Bolshevik Revolution was then raging. He designated the Jews "in predominating measure" as "makers of revolution". He was referring to Russia, Germany and Hungary. In his book Ford alleged an "identity of being" between Jewry and Communism or Bolshevism.

How does Ford arrive at this thesis which, to our ears, resembles NS-propaganda about "Jewish Bolshevism"? Let us listen to what the Jew Felix Teilhaber says in 1919: "Socialism is a Jewish idea… For centuries our wise men have preached Socialism". That is to say, Jewish thinkers stood at the cradle of Communism and Socialism. Thus Karl Marx descends from rabbis from both his parents. His portrait hung in the living room of a Jewish lady-researcher who moreover acknowledged: "I grew up with the idea that a Jewish person is for social justice and is progressive and socialist. Socialism was our religion." Quasi-religious features continually sound in the writings of this early communist period. Many of the Jews engaged in Bolshevism felt themselves so to speak "believing soldiers of the World Revolution". Thus Kurt Eisner already expected in 1908 that the "religion of Socialism" would overcome the "despair of the vale of sorrows" and the "hopelessness of earthly fate". Leo Rosenberg in 1917 glorified the proletariat as the "world Messiah".

The question arises in concrete terms: how many Jews were there in revolutionary committees? In the 1917 seven-man Bolshevik Politburo there were four Jews: Leon Trotsky, Leo Kamenev, Grigori Zinoviev and Grigori Sokolnikov. The non-Jews were Lenin, Stalin, Bubnow. Amongst the 21 members of the revolutionary Central Committee in Russia there were in 1917 6 of Jewish nationality, that is 28.6%. The extremely high proportion of Jews amongst the communist founding fathers and revolutionary committees was by no means restricted to the Soviet Union. Ferdinand Lassalle was also a Jew, as also Eduard Bernstein and Rosa Luxembourg. In 1924, of six CP-leaders in Germany, four—and thus two thirds—were Jewish. In Vienna, of 137 leading Austrian Marxists, 81—and thus 60%—were Jewish. Of 48 People's Commissars in Hungary, 30 were Jewish. But the Jewish share of the revolutionary Soviet secret police, the Cheka, was also disproportionately high. Whilst the Jewish share of the population in the Soviet Union was around 2% in 1934, the Jewish formed 39% of the leaders of the Cheka. In the Soviet Union, it might be said by way of explanation, the Jews counted as a separate nationality. Its numbers in the Cheka were 36% higher than the Russian. Indeed, in the Ukraine the Jews formed 75% of the Cheka.

This identification led to a chapter which at that time produced huge indignation. The murder of the Russian Tsar and his family was ordered by a Jew, Jacob Sverdlov, and was carried out on Tsar Nicholas II by the hand of the Jew, Chaimovitz Jurovski. The further question presents itself, whether the Jews were fellow-travellers or leaders of the Communist movement. The latter is the case: Leon Trotsky in the USSR and Bela Kun in Hungary.

Not to forget the Munich Soviet: Kurt Eisner, Eugen Leviné, Tobias Achselrod and other Jews were active as undisputed leading personalities. At that time, there was a great sensation when armed Red Guardists penetrated the Munich Nunciature of the later Pope Pacelli. He was threatened by the revolutionaries with a pistol held against his chest. Also, at the end of April 1919, the resoluteness of the revolutionary process was manifested by the shooting of seven members of the "Thule Society", which was closely connected to the later NSDAP. This shooting of hostages, given a banner headline by the London Times on 5th May 1919, provided "nourishment to a poisonous anti-Semitism and aroused an appetite for revenge for long afterwards".

Further questions could be raised about the revolutionary zeal and the determination of Jewish Communists. Indeed, this revolutionary elite was really in earnest. Thus Franz Koritschoner of the CP of Austria declared: "To lie and to steal, yes even to kill for an idea, that is courage; for this courage is needed". Gregori Zinoviev announced in 1917: "90 of the 100 million Soviet-Russians must join in. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be exterminated [rooted out]" (p138). Moisei Wolodarki put it in a similar way: "The interests of the Revolution require the physical destruction of the bourgeoisie" (p138). Similarly Arthur Rosenberg in 1922: "Soviet power has the duty of disabling its irreconcillable enemies" (p`163).

Undoubtedly these statements made by Communist Jewish revolutionaries were no empty threats. This was serious. This was deadly serious. According to a statistical investigation made by a professor and presented to Churchill in 1930, the following people were supposed to have fallen victim to the Soviets up to 1924: 28 Orthodox Bishops, 1,219 Orthodox religious, 6,000 professors and teachers, 9,000 doctors, 12,950 landowners, 54,000 officers, 70,000 policemen, 193,000 workers, 260,000 soldiers, 355,000 intellectuals and professional people, and 815,000 peasants.

A particularly gruesome chapter was the suppression of any resistance to forced collectivisation in the Ukraine. With the proportionate participation of Jewish Chekists, more than 10 million people died here. Most of them died of starvation.

On no account may the express anti-Church and anti-Christian alignment of the Bolshevik Revolution be understated, as is the case in most schoolbooks. In fact, Bolshevism with its militant atheism conducted the most comprehensive persecution of Christians and religion in history. According to statistics produced by the Russian authorities, between 1917 and 1940, 96,000 Orthodox Christians, amongst them priests, deacons, monks, nuns and other colleagues, were short after their arrest.

Neither the Orthodox Churches or monasteries were shielded. The edifices were either destroyed or used for profane purposes. Thus Churches were transformed into clubs, shops or granaries. The gold and silver of sacred treasures of the Orthodox Church was used to finance worldwide revolutionary movements.

How did the religious Jews themselves fare in the early Soviet Union? They too fell prey to the persecution of the Bolsheviks. The emphatic head of the Bolshevik so-called Godless Movement was Trotsky. At that time he denied his Jewishness, but he was perceived as a Jew by the Russians and around the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have seen the strong and long-lasting marks left by Jews on the revolutionary movement in Russia and Middle-European states. It was that which led the American President, Woodrow Wilson, to the assessment in 1919 that the Bolshevik movement was "Jewish led". One could with a certain justification, looking at the millions who died in this first, revolutionary phase, ask about the "crimes" of the Jews. Jews were active in great numbers both at the leadership level and in the Cheka shooting squads. For that reason one could with a certain justification designate Jews as a "perpetrator people". That may sound shocking. It would, however, follow the same logic as is used when designating Germans as a perpetrator people.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we must take a more careful look. The Jews who devoted themselves to Bolshevism and Revolution, first broke their religious ties. By origin and upbringing they were Jews, but by their world-view most of them were ardent haters of all religion. The same applied to the National Socialists. Most of them came from a Christian home. But they laid aside their religion and became enemies to the Christian and to the Jewish religion. The common element of Bolshevism and Nationalism was thus a hostile alignment to religion and godlessness. For that reason neither "the Germans" nor "the Jews" are perpetrator peoples. But one can say with absolute justification: the Godless, with Godless ideologies, these were the perpetrator people of the last, bloody century. These Godless ideologies gave the "instruments of evil" the justification, even a good conscience, for their crimes. Thus they could set their own sovereignty above the Godly commandment, "thou shalt not murder"…A historical and so far unique million-fold murder was the result. That is why, Ladies and Gentlemen, I plead with determination for reflection back to our religious roots and ties. Only these can prevent catastrophes, such as those the Godless have inflicted on us. The Christian religion is a religion of life. Christ has said: "I want that ye have life and that ye have it in abundance" (John 10,10). By this is meant not just the future, but also quite concretely our present day life and survival. That is why it is also so important that we adopt a reference to God in the European Constitution.

My very honourable Ladies and Gentlemen, we have thus seen that the reproach against Germans, that they are simply a "perpetrator people", misses the point and is unjustified. We should in future together defend ourselves against this reproach. Our motto is: Justice for Germany, Justice for Germans.

I conclude saying: With God in a good future for Europe! With God a good future for our German fatherland in particular!

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