An Introduction to Hitler's Germany

The Good Society by Matt Koehl. NEW ORDER, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2007. ISBN 0-9648533-3-7, booklet format, 24 pp., nine photographs. Available from http://www.nspublications.com.

On January 11, 2005, NEW ORDER Commander Matt Koehl was given the opportunity to present  an uncensored, pro-NS description of Hitler's Germany to an honors class of political science high school students in Worthington, Ohio. This booklet is a transcript of his remarks.

The masters of deceit would have us believe that Hitler's Germany was a nightmare world, a brutal dictatorship characterized by terror, hatred, slave labor and genocide. Workers' rights were trampled on, the youth conscripted and dragged off to fight in endless wars and women reduced to mere brood cows. People went hungry because the evil Nazi economy placed "guns before butter," and science and technology were held in thrall to the capitalist-military war machine.

The truth about Hitler's Germany is exactly the opposite of this horror-filled fantasy. Rather, the National-Socialist order was modern and progressive. The economy was efficient and productive, with full employment that generated a high standard of living for the working class. Mothers and children were honored, respected and cherished. There was free health care and free higher education for all. It was, indeed, a good society!

Koehl begins by setting forth the criteria for an ideal state. These include a stable and prosperous economy, affordable housing, acessible health care, universal education, support for the farming community, public safety, and protection of the environment. He then shows how National-Socialist Germany fulfilled each of these in a systematic and comprehensive manner.

Especially interesting is his explanation of how the NS economy functioned. By basing the German economy on the productive capacity of the German worker rather than some extraneous metal such as gold or silver, Hitler was able to bypass the international capitalist financial system, and create a stable currency with no debt or inflation. The key to this was drawing a distinction between productive capital and speculative capital. The stunning success of the NS economy, in turn, was able to finance housing, health care, and a high standard of living for ordinary Germans.

As a former Hitler Youth member once told NS Bibliophile, the Marxist plan for making everyone economically equal is to make everyone equally poor, while the NS plan for economic equality is to make everyone equally wealthy.

NS Bibliophile heartily and without reservation recommends The Good Society as a brief introduction to the reality of Hitler's Germany. Both readers new to the subject as those well versed in it will find it informative and inspiring.

Our only complaint is that it is too short! Matt Koehl could write volumes on this topic -- and we hope that some day he will!

-HH-





Note on the Murphy Translation of MEIN KAMPF

There is an ongoing debate among National-Socialists and White Nationalists over which English language translation of Mein Kampf is the best.

NS Bibliophile believes that the Ralph Manheim translation published by Houghton Mifflin, while not perfect, is superior to all others. Despite his undisguised hostility to Adolf Hitler and the NS worldview, Manheim's translation is the most accurate and best captures the spirit of Hitler's message.

However, there are some people who prefer the James Murphy translation, first published by the British publishing house of Hurst and Blackett in 1939. Sadly, this preference is not based on the quality of the translation, but rather on the dishonest claim made by the publisher that the Murphy translation is the "official version" and "authorized" by Hitler himself. But that is not true.

Here is a short version of the true story: In 1936, the German government contracted with Murphey to do a translation of Mein Kampf, and Murphy made an initial rough draft. It contains numerous errors, and the prose is stilted and awkward. However, Murphy was ill and did not have the energy to complete the project. His rough draft was obtained by Hurst and Blackett, which they published, without corrections or modification, in 1939 as the "authorized" English edition. But neither the German government nor Hitler himself ever approved Murphey's initial draft.

But it gets worse: because he was ill, Murphy hired one Greta Lorke an assistant translator to help him out. Unbeknownst to him, Lorke was an operative of the "Red Orchestra" (Rote Kapelle, auf deutsch), the notorious Communist espionage and sabotage ring run by the Soviet Union. She saw working on the Mein Kampf translation as a perfect cover identity that allowed her to participate in Red Orchestra activities without drawing suspicion to herself. Additionally, she saw the assignment as an opportunity to discredit Hitlerism by fiddling with the passages that she translated.

An account (sympathetic, of course!) of Lorke's involvement in the Murphy translation may be found on pages 110 - 111 of the book Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler by Anne Nelson, Random House, NY, 2009.

A fuller examinaton into Lorke's role (including the insertion of deliberately erroneous material) appears in a harder-to-find earlier volume, Hitler's Mein Kampf in Britain and America by James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1980.

To summarize: (1) the James Murphy translation of Mein Kampf published by Hurst and Blackett was an uncorrected rough draft made by a sick man; (2) it was NOT authorized or approved by either Hitler or the German government; and (3) parts of the translation were done by the Soviet spy and saboteur Greta Lorke, who was pursuing her own anti-NS ideological agenda.

Once again, NS Bibliophile recommends the Manheim translation -- or better yet, the German original!

-88-