by SS-Hauptamt

The Meaning of Life

To preserve and increase oneself is the deepest meaning of life. Through its racial policy, the National Socialist leadership places itself at the service of life and strives to fulfil its meaning for the German folk. The preservation and increase of life, however, includes the urge for improvement, higher development and perfection, which is inherent in all living things. Every living being strives for the full development of its inherent powers. The supra- individual life of genera and species is completed in their growing adaptation to the environment. The all-embracing life on our earth causes species to come into being and pass away, it forms ever new forms out of itself with the aim of the growing perfection of individuals and species, their higher development, the increase of functions. It is not blind chance that directs the coming into being and passing away in the millions of years in which life has taken place on earth, no matter how much it may push itself into the foreground in individual cases and cloud our view, above it stands the divine will of the all-embracing life, which is in itself fulfilment and perfection.

Folks and races are the highest expressions of life. Their task, too, is preservation and increase; their meaning, too, lies in the striving for development, increase and perfection of their being and essence. They remain if they obey this law of life, they perish and others take their place if they refuse to obey it.

The preservation and multiplication, the development and increase of life takes place in the struggle for existence to which every plant, every animal, every species and every genus is subjected. In this struggle they are weighed, selected or exterminated. Human beings and human races are also subjected to this struggle; it determines their value and their right to exist. The cultured folks, however, through their artificially created environment, their cultural world, have largely removed the individual from this struggle; the folk community as a whole stands up for it, it must always stand up for its existence and its position in the world, for its living space and its culture. The folk as a whole can and must therefore demand from each of its members unconditional commitment to the whole in war and peace. The individual is driven to this commitment by the law of duty in his breast, which compels him to develop his strength in the service of the highest values of his folk and to make sacrifices for family, clan and folk.

The Goal of Folkish Evolution

It is given to cultured folks, as the highest forms of life, to consciously recognize and shape that which lives unconsciously in all living things. Out of their innermost being they create the ideal to which they are called to aspire. In the works of their best painters, sculptors, poets and sages, this physical and spiritual ideal takes tangible form. Legend and history hold in the memory of the folk those men and women in whom the racial and folkish essence has been most purely and perfectly expressed and who point the way to the future for the living generation. The best and most far-sighted leaders of the folk have always striven to promote them in the fulfilment of their innate law and have sought forms which would lend permanence to their work and serve the higher racial development.

The conscious development and improvement of a kind or race is called breeding. Mankind has known for thousands of years the breeding of animal and plant races, whereby, building on the law of evolution of life, a high increase of characteristics was achieved according to certain goals set by the breeder himself (often, however, contrary to nature). The confusing abundance of hereditary factors in humans makes the process of inheritance infinitely more complicated than in animals and plants, and this is compounded by the slow succession of the sexes and the resulting difficulties in maintaining a direction of selection. A “conscious” breeding up of an entire folk according to the example of animal and plant breeding is therefore beyond the possibility of human ability and will.

The higher development of a cultured folk must be borne by a consciousness of a completely different kind than conscious animal breeding. It presupposes an inner vision of the racial essence in its perfection, which is at the same time felt as a divine commandment and in this respect is the core of every kind’s own religion. It presupposes the will to devotion and sacrifice, which subordinates one's own self to the divine commandment that works itself out in the community of blood and destiny of the folk. What the animal accomplishes by virtue of its instincts, the human being must, in addition, fulfil according to his conscience and the law of ought in his breast. History gives us enough examples of the higher development of cultured folks as well as of their decline and fall. The precondition for the continued existence of the folks is the preservation of the purity of the race; the precondition for higher development, however, is the existence of a sufficiently numerous selection of men and women who are prepared to take on more duties, to make greater sacrifices and to embody the ideal of the race more purely than the other members of the folk. For the higher development of a race and a folk, as in all of nature, can only ever come from individuals who maintain themselves as the best and most capable and in the course of generations multiply proportionately and again and again make a selection of the best from among themselves.

The way in which this higher development of cultured folks takes place, i.e. how this selection is formed and shaped in each case, what goals it sets for itself, what bond binds the individual members together, is predetermined by racial characteristics and by the particular conditions of life; it changes and varies in the course of history with the changing destinies of the folk and their increasing culture. The goal of development, however, is always the same and is more or less clearly and unambiguously expressed in all forms of selection: it is the perfection, it is the increase of the physical of the physical, mental and spiritual powers of a folk. This goal, however, is only achieved if it flows from the deepest essence of the dominant race of a folk and fully corresponds to its dispositions. Often this selective stratum was not built up in accordance with the racial substance of the folk or it was no longer in accordance with the changed living conditions of the folk, often it set itself goals which were alien to the race and the folk, then its existence was not lasting and its decline sometimes dragged the whole folk with it to ruin. The cultured folk of the present day, whose selective class has remained most unchanged through the centuries and which is most clearly aware of its task of taking on more duties than the others, is the Japanese folk; Japan owes its steady upward development and the long duration of its Reich to the selective class of the samurai.

In the history of the European folks, reference can be made to the Spartans and the Roman Senate, to the French Chevalier and the English gentleman. Among the German folk, the German Order of Knights, the guild of Hanseatic merchants, the Prussian officer corps, the Protestant clergy, all formed a selection along certain lines through certain periods. But in Germany, as in Japan, a selective class has not yet developed that embraced the whole folk community and felt responsible for it. The main obstacle was the non-racial religion, which distorted the ideal of the Nordic race and thus prevented the respective selection strata from creating an ideal that was entirely their own. The strong influence of antiquity also prevented the free, unbroken development of an original German-Nordic culture, although we do not want to overlook the support we owe to antiquity. It has severely impaired the German selective strata of the past in the formation and development of a racial ideology. Today, in National Socialist Germany, we must build on completely new foundations and seek new paths; for the selection examples of our history can only become instructive for us through their mistakes.

Nature and Task of Selection

The breeding goal of the German folk is determined by the Nordic race, for it is the basic race of the German folk; it unites the German folk into a blood community. Adolf Hitler, through his racial policy, has for the first time in the history of our folk created the prerequisite which makes possible the clear elaboration of a uniform breeding goal for the whole German folk. Through the prevention of race-mixing, the fight against counterselection, the enhancement of the will to have children and the creation of a race-appropriate, kind-specific environment, the German folk was educated to think racially, and the direction of their future development was set for centuries, even millennia. On this basis, an order of men could be formed who are prepared to carry the torch into the future for our folk in hard discipline and to advance on the difficult path of the higher development of the folkish being and the racial forces by taking on increased duties.

That the Nordic race alone can determine the breeding goal of the German folk is clear from the history of the Aryan folks. It created the cultures of these folks; as long as it determined the destinies of these folks, they rose to great heights; their decline brought about the downfall of the folks and their cultures, for disorganization always means cultural decay. Preservation and increase of the Nordic blood share is therefore is therefore the most important component of the breeding goal of the German folk. This does not mean a devaluation of the other European races which have contributed to the building of our folk.

We know what we owe to the Flemish perseverance, the Eastern warmth of spirit, the Dinaric originality, the Western mobility; the impact races have contributed to the fullness of life and the incomparable richness of German culture; the high level of achievement of the German folk is also a consequence of their special racial composition. Nevertheless, especially for the German folk, who are forced by their central position, more than other folks in Europe, to constantly fight for their self-assertion and world standing, the preservation and increase of the share of the Nordic peasant and warrior races is the indispensable precondition of their existence.

The Nordic race, like all living things, represents an infinite variety of phenomena within the unity formed by the common basic stock of Nordic hereditary factors. No two members of this race are perfectly alike; there are gradations, differences, degrees of physical, mental, character and spiritual qualities, powers and values. If we add to this the fact that almost every Nordic German also carries in him blood elements of some other race, then we understand what a wealth of manifestations of Nordic humanity there is in our folk. Therefore, the level of achievement of the races can be raised or lowered by different propagation within the races. A higher development of the Nordic race and thus of the German folk therefore requires the formation of a selection within the Nordic race. The bearers of the best heredity must unite to form an order whose most important task is to see to it that the most efficient members of the race reproduce most strongly.

The wide range and the great diversity in heredity and appearance within the Nordic race makes this selection process possible. the selection process which leads to higher development. The values according to which the selection is carried out result from the nature of the of the Nordic race; the desired image of the German man of Nordic blood is the goal to which it strives for.

The selection extends to the whole German folk and its Nordic blood heritage, it does not separate it into a layer of the leaders and one of the led. On the contrary, it forms the unifying bond and the formative core of the folk community. The selective orders of the past could therefore not last and could not fulfil their deepest meaning, because they either detached themselves from the folk or were too one sidedly bound to a specific purpose or profession. The separation from the folk community carries with it the danger that the fullness of the Nordic race will no longer be grasped through limitation and that through inbreeding the inferior will also be nurtured and inherited, while high-quality racial hereditary traits will be lost in the selection layer. The Order, whose task in National Socialist Germany is selection, will accept all those. The Order, whose task in National Socialist Germany is selection, will accept all carriers of high-quality Nordic heredity who are willing and able to place themselves in the service of the higher breeding of our folk by accepting greater obligations. As development progresses, its aims will become ever higher and its demands ever more stringent.

Every valuable human race forms certain types out of the wealth of its appearances, which embody individual sides of its nature in a special way. The German Order of Knights, the Hanseatic patrician class, the Prussian officer corps formed such a selection of typical Nordic humanity. The National Socialist Order of Selection will encompass all the valuable types of the Nordic race; it will form further types from within itself and thus bring the whole wealth of the Nordic soul, the whole fullness of the physical and spiritual hereditary traits to development and enhancement.

The Order of the SS

The order-laws issued by the Reichsführer-SS include everything necessary for the formation of a selection which must be the standard bearer of the future of the National Socialist Reich. The SS is an association of Nordic men selected according to special criteria. The physical ideal of the Nordic race determines selection. Every selection must start from the body, because the living body is the manifestation of the soul, is the carrier of the heredity. There is no Nordic soul, no Nordic spirit and no Nordic character without the Nordic body. The increase of the Nordic blood portion can only take place from the physical. That is why the selection order of the SS must extend to those German men who bear the best Nordic imprint in their physical appearance.

For the members of the SS there is the “marriage permit”, which is “granted or refused solely on the basis of racial and hereditary health considerations”. The wife of the SS man must also be a carrier of good Nordic heredity; for only from the marriage of Nordic people may we expect children of Nordic race. The prerequisite of every higher racial development is the right choice of spouse. The greater the number of hereditarily valuable clans of German, Nordic-determined kind, the greater the guarantee for the upbringing and increased performance of our folk. The SS man, out of responsibility for the future of his folk, takes upon himself a duty which is not imposed on the folk community as a whole, namely that not he alone, but the Order, decides on the choice of his wife. Mockery, scorn and misunderstanding will not deter him, for anyone who wants to see this “regulated choice of spouse” as a “human breeding establishment” only shows that he is a stranger to life itself and is caught up in a spirit that has detached itself from life and the eternal laws of nature. It is that racially alien and instinctless spirit which knows only the erotic instinct as decisive for the choice of marriage, which does not know that in the choice of a marriage partner only the racial instinct as a shaped and formative instinct may show the way.

In reality, by the way, the majority of marriages neither in the present, nor even less in the past, are concluded on the basis of the erotic instinct. The choice of marriage is and was often made according to aspects that have just as pernicious an effect as the rule of the chaotic instinct, namely according to the property, class or denomination of the spouse. Binding the marriage licence for SS men to racial and hereditary health considerations also prevents marriage on the basis of class, material and denominational grounds. In reality, therefore, it re-establishes the natural soil on which alone a healthy marriage grows, in which the spouses are united by genuine love, which is only present where the instinct is pure and fully effective. The racial instinct speaks all the more clearly and powerfully the sooner the man and the woman come to marriage after full maturity.

The Order of the SS places the choice of spouse of its members under the responsibility for the future of the folk. It goes without saying that every SS man also has the obligation to marry and to found a family with many children. The bearers of the best Nordic heredity must multiply the most within the folk community. The increase in the physical and spiritual fitness of a folk is bound up with the increase in the number of children in their physical and spiritual families. “The question of many children is not a private matter for the individual, but a duty to his ancestors and to our folk.” The selection strata of the folks very often did not promote the founding of families and the abundance of children; for the German Order of Knights, for example, celibacy was the order's duty. In this way, the meaning of selection is reversed: instead of increasing the valuable heredity of the folks, its transmission is prevented and the most valuable clans are condemned to extinction. The SS is therefore not an order of men, but the conjured community of the clans of SS men, which renews and expands itself from generation to generation.

In this way, the Order creates the possibility of applying selection to its own offspring. This is the only guarantee that the Nordic selection layer formed by the clan community will remain a selection for all future times.

Out of the deepest obligation to his own Nordic race, the Reichsführer-SS issued the order of October 28, 1939, pointing out the danger to the Nordic heredity of our folk evoked by the war, namely that many of the best young men fall without their heredity living on in their children. “Only he can die quietly who knows that his clan, that all that his ancestors and he himself have wanted and striven for, finds its continuation in the children.” The limits of perhaps otherwise necessary bourgeois laws and customs” cannot apply to our young soldiers who prove themselves as whole men out on the fronts and daily stake their lives for the future of the German folk. This future is then only fully secured when they, who lay down their lives, live on in their children.

Selection of Nordic-destined men, choice of spouses according to racial criteria, marriage obligation and abundance of children are the biological foundations on which the Order of the SS is built and through which it initiates the higher development of our folk and secures it for the future. In order for it to endure as an Order, it must also have an inner, spiritual bond, a community of a special kind must unite the members of the Order, the spirit of common obligation must fill each individual man.

The common goal is the selection of the best Nordic humanity, the increase of the Nordic blood share through abundance of children, in which the SS man and his wife see their highest happiness and the meaning of their lives, is the development of all the powers inherent in the Nordic heredity and the undiminished transmission of the dispositions to the future generations.

The Order of the SS unites in the common National Socialist worldview. The SS is a following of Adolf Hitler ready to the last devotion, it is a conspiratorial order of the National Socialist worldview.

The Order is united by the common faith that flows from the Nordic attitude of the soul. For the Nordic man there is only one faith, which is in harmony with his reason and his thinking. That is why he has always fought the hardest battle against priesthood and priestly deceit, against mystification, superstition and mediocrity, which stands between him and the divine workings of Providence. From the depths of the Nordic soul, he feels directly connected to the divine will to order the all-embracing life that reveals itself in nature, in his folk, in his clan and in his blood. The confession of this inherent faith is the touchstone for membership of the Order, for it is in the struggle for freedom of spirit that the Nordic soul proves itself.

The Reichsführer-SS, through the SS Honour Law, united the Order by a common conception of honour anchored in the essence of the Nordic race. “The honour of the German, determined by the racial consciousness and the custom of the folk, guarded by the individual, valued by the whole German folk as the most precious jewel and the highest good on earth has been since ancient times the epitome of loyalty, loyalty to oneself, to the kinsmen of the same blood, to one’s fellow swordsman, to one’s comrade, to the Fuhrer of the folk, to blood and soil. ” (Reichsführer-SS H. Himmler.)

The high character values of the Nordic race, to which the Reichsführer-SS commits his men, give the will of the Order members a common direction that binds them all. Besides honour and loyalty, it is the idea of freedom, namely the freedom to do what our best, innermost nature drives us to do, the freedom to serve the Fuhrer and the Reich. Freedom is joined by obedience, the unconditional obedience of the political soldier to his Fuhrer, which is nevertheless a free obedience, since Fuhrer and followers are of one blood and therefore of one mind. Fighting spirit and toughness are the most original characteristics of the Nordic race, toughness as a service to one's own body, a controlled way of life, because only he who remains master of his own life makes himself master of the enemy. “Whoever wants to live must fight, and whoever does not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to live. ” (Adolf Hitler.) Deeply rooted in the Nordic nature is also the respect for the personality of the blood and folk comrades, which grants them the same honour as itself and holds their property sacred.

The prerequisite for admission to the Order of the SS is the Nordic blood heritage. However, selection is followed by probation through performance; for it is only in performance that it becomes apparent whether the selection was fully valid and correct. Performance, military service and parenthood are obligatory values for the SS man.

Part of the essence of an order is the bond of a particularly deep and strong comradeship, which not only embraces the SS men but also includes their clans. In the “Lebensborn”, the Order of the SS has created an institution which supports hereditary- biologically valuable, large families, which cares for racially and hereditary-biologically valuable expectant mothers and their children, even if they are illegitimate, which supports the wives of the SS men with advice and deeds, The law of the Reichsführer-SS of 9 November 1937 makes it the sacred task of the SS, as a conjured community of the clans of the SS men, to assist the wives and children of deceased comrades in every way. In this way, every SS man and his relatives feel embedded in a strong community on which they can rely in every situation in life.

The clan community of the Order will also create a special form of education and has already done the preparatory work for this. The education of the younger generation has proved to be one of the best means of binding the Order in various Orders of the German past, because the youth grows up in comradeship and, at the most malleable age, absorbs the spirit of the Order into which it will one day enter. An increased sense of duty and a heightened sense of honour will be the goal of this education. At an early age, the youth must become aware of their responsibility towards their own person, towards their clan, race and folk. A purely German-Nordic spirit will determine the physical, character and spiritual education of the Order's youth.

The deepest meaning of the SS, to be an order of German, Nordic-dominated men, includes in itself the special task of the SS to be guardians and caretakers of German peasantry and soldiery, for the Nordic race will only be able to exist as a peasant and warrior race. That is why the Order leads its members back to the land as far as possible, that is why it takes on the difficult but for our folk so important task of settling the newly won East. The SS Wehrbauer (soldier-peasant) is the forerunner of this eastern settlement, in him peasantry and militancy prove themselves at the same time, here the man can steel himself in constant battle, so that from the soldier-peasantry the best offspring will arise for the Order.

As an order of Nordic-determined men, the SS also has the task of initiating the community of all the Germanic folks. The Reichsführer-SS is instructed by the Fuhrer (order of 12 August 1942) to conduct negotiations with all Germanic folks in Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands within the sphere of the NSDAP, its branches and affiliated associations. The SS is the bearer of the Nordic idea in Europe, it calls upon the best of the Germanic folks across state and national borders to join its ranks and take up the fight for the preservation of Nordic blood. The laws of the SS will not only determine the racial structure of the German folk, they will also contribute to that of all the Germanic folks of Europe.

The Order of the SS does not want to be a leadership class, but a select class of Nordic people, it does not strive for a new gentility in the folk community, which would one day have to tear it apart again, it stands under the law “I serve” and wants for itself only higher duties, greater commitment and harder struggle. He who makes the highest demands on himself, who works hard on himself, who despises lavish living, is called to lead a folk.

The words of our Fuhrer Adolf Hitler point the way for the SS and its leadership task: “The political leadership of a nation must seek the most essential distinction from the rest of the folk not in higher enjoyment, but in harder self-discipline.”