Source: Domarus, pp. 319-322.
Marxism as a world view of decomposition has with keen insight recognized that the trade union movement offered the possibility of waging the offensive against the State and against human society in the future with an absolutely devastating weapon. But not, of course, to help the worker—what is the worker in any country to these international evangelists? Nothing at all! They don't even see him. They themselves are not workers, they are litterateurs, alien to the Volk, an alien mob (volksfremdes Pack)!
[...]
The sum of want, suffering and misery which has passed through millions of small workers' families and small households since then [1918] is something for which the Criminals of November 1918 cannot be excused. So they have nothing to complain about. We have not taken revenge. Had we wanted to take revenge, we would have had to strike tens of thousands dead.
[...]
Personally, I am against accepting any honorary titles, and I do not believe that one will ever be able to accuse me of much in this respect. I do not do what is not absolutely necessary for me to do. I would never want to have visiting cards printed with the titles which are so ceremoniously conferred upon people in this earthly world. I would not want to have anything else on my gravestone but my name. But perhaps my own peculiar biography has made me more capable than anyone else of understanding and comprehending the essence and life as a whole in the various German classes—not because I have been able to look down on this life from above, but because I have experienced it myself, because I have stood in the midst of this life, because Fate, on a whim or perhaps guided by Providence, threw me into this broad mass of Volk and people. Because I myself worked for years in the building trade and was forced to earn my own living. And because I once again stood in this broad mass for years as an ordinary soldier, and because life then raised me into the other classes of our Volk so that I also know these better than countless others who are born into these classes. Thus perhaps Fate chose me above all others to be—I may apply this term to myself—the honest broker, a broker honest to all sides. I have no personal interest; I am neither dependent upon the State nor upon a public office; neither am I dependent upon the economy or industry or any kind of union. I am an independent man, and I have set myself no other goal than to serve the German Volk to the best of my power and ability—and above all to serve the millions of people who have perhaps been hit hardest thanks to their simple trust, their ignorance, and the baseness of their former leaders. I have always held to the opinion that there is nothing finer than to be an advocate of those who are not capable of defending themselves.
[...]
I know this broad mass of my Volk and would like to say only one thing to our intellectuals: any Reich built only upon the classes of intellect is a weak construction!
I know this intellect: perpetually brooding, perpetually inquiring, but also perpetually uncertain, perpetually hesitating, vacillating, never firm! He who would construct a Reich on these intellectual classes alone will find that he is building on sand. It is no accident that religions are more stable than the various forms of government. They generally tend to sink their roots deeper into the earth; they would be inconceivable without this broad mass of people. I know that the intellectual classes are all too easily seized by the arrogance that rates this Volk according to the standards of its knowledge and its so-called wisdom; yet there are things here which even the understanding of the prudent fails to see because it is unable to see them. This broad mass of people is certainly often dull and certainly backward in some respects, not as nimble, not as witty, not as intellectual. But it does have one thing: it has faith, it has persistence, it has stability.
[...]
I can clearly say: the triumph of this Revolution never would have come had my companions, the broad mass of our lesser Volksgenossen, not stood behind us with tremendous faith and unshakable persistence. I could not imagine anything better for our Germany than if it were to succeed in leading these people who are now standing outside our fighting ranks into the new State and shape them into a sturdy foundation for the new State.
The poet once said: "Germany will be at its height when its poorest sons are its most faithful citizens." I have now come to know these poorest sons for four and a half years as musketeers in the Great World War; I came to know those who perhaps had nothing to gain for themselves, and who were heroes simply by virtue of the call of their blood, out of a feeling of belonging to their Volk. No Volk has more right to erect monuments to its unknown musketeer as much as our German Volk. This unshakable Guard which stood firm in countless battles, which never wavered and never yielded, which gave us a thousand demonstrations of tremendous courage, of faith, of willingness to sacrifice, of discipline, and of obedience, is one we must conquer for the State, one we must win over for the coming German Reich, our Third Reich. This is perhaps one of the most valuable things we can give this Guard.
Because I know this Volk better than anyone else who also, at the same time, knows the rest of the Volk, in this case I am not only willing to assume the role of honest broker, but am also happy that Fate is able to cast me for this part. I shall never in my life have greater pride than when, at the end of my days, I am able to say: I have gained the German worker for the German Reich.