It’s very likely that everyone is heartily sick and tired, now, of the debate about crimes against humanity – but that’s all the more reason why we should pay attention to their origins.

It may be true that there is little point in dwelling on a past we can’t change, especially when there is near universal agreement on just how bad it was – but consulting the historical record can be salutary in revealing how conditions are fostered which, left unchallenged, can lead to appalling atrocities.

A century ago this week – a full decade before he became Führer – Adolf Hitler gave his assent to the 25-point plan that was intended as the ‘unalterable’ manifesto of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, of which he became leader in 1921.

The document was written by far-right political leader Anton Drexler, who in 1919 had founded the German Workers’ Party (DAP), the precursor of the NSDAP. The 25-point plan was edited by Hitler himself, who announced it to a crowd of some 2 000 supporters at the Hofbräuhaus on 24 February 1920.

Unspeakable horrors

It became the central plank of the NSDAP’s appeal to voters which, by 1932, had earned it the most seats in the German Reichstag. That no party commanded a majority sufficient to determine who would be chancellor prompted former German leader Franz von Papen and other conservatives to prevail on President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor, which he did, in January 1933. Soon afterwards, the Nazis embarked on transforming Germany into the one-party dictatorship which, in just over a decade, visited unspeakable horrors on millions of people.

It should be unnerving to recognise in the plainly stated precepts of the NSDAP manifesto some of the thinking that has reinforced – and continues to reinforce – South African notions over the past century about what the ‘nation’ and the ‘national interest’ are, and how best to serve them.

There is no sensible comparison to be drawn directly between the detail or the consequences of policy-making in Germany and South Africa, or anywhere else.

But the experience of people and politics elsewhere and at other times in history provides compelling evidence of the importance of always subjecting ideas to scrutiny, and calling out risks that lie in what might seem at the time common-sense propositions advanced in the name of national well-being and success, but which contain the seeds of tyranny and abuse.

‘Rough picture’

For Hitler, the 25 ‘guiding principles’, as he wrote in the second volume of his autobiography, Mein Kampf, ‘were devised to give, primarily to the man of the people, a rough picture of the movement’s aims. They are in a sense a political creed, which on the one hand recruits for the movement and on the other is suited to unite and weld together by a commonly recognized obligation those who have been recruited.’

This ‘rough picture’ determined who belonged, and, by virtue of their belonging, what their collective interests were, and it set out how these were to be achieved.

At the heart of the project was an assertion of the virtue and the necessity of the state – effectively, the party-in-state – attaining overriding power over the individual and his or her rights to citizenship, equality, freedom of association and speech, and property ownership.

For those German citizens who recognised confirmation of their belonging in the 25-point plan, it must have been – indeed was – seductive. Even they ultimately paid a high price.

The following is what Wikipedia offers as ‘a simple English translation of the original NSDAP manifesto of 1920’ (with ‘unnecessary or explanatory text … left out’).

The Manifesto

  1. We want all Germans to live in a “Greater Germany” 
  2. We want Germany to be treated the same as other nations, and we want the peace treaties of Versailles to be cancelled.
  3. We want land and territory (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our surplus population.
  4. Only Germans may be citizens of Germany. Only those of the German races may be members of the nation, their religion does not matter. No Jew may be a citizen.
  5. Non-citizens may live in Germany, but there will be special laws for foreigners living in Germany.
  6. Only citizens can vote for parliament and councils, or vote on laws. Everyone who works for the German government, a state government or even a small village must be a citizen of Germany. We will stop giving people jobs because of the political party they are in, only the best people should get a job.
  7. We think that the government’s first job is to make sure every citizen has a job and enough to eat. If the government cannot do this, people who are not citizens should be made to leave Germany.
  8. No-one who is not of a German-race should be allowed to live in Germany. We want anyone who is not of a German-race who started living in Germany after 2 August 1914 to leave the country.
  9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties.
  10. Every citizen should have a job. Their work should not be selfish, but help everyone. Therefore we demand
  11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work. The breaking of the slavery of interest.
  12. So many people die or lose their property in a war, it is wrong for other people to make money from the war. Anyone who made money from the war should have all that money taken away.
  13. We want all very big corporations to be owned by the government.
  14. Big industrial companies should share their profits with the workers.
  15. We want old age pensions to be increased.
  16. We want to
    1. create a healthy middle class
    1. split up big department stores, and let small traders rent space inside them
    1. make State and town governments try to buy from small traders.
  17. We want to change the way land is owned. We also want
    1. a law to take over land if the country needs it, without the government having to pay for it;
    1. to abolish ground rent; and
    1. to prohibit land speculation (buying land just to sell to someone else for more money).
  18. Crimes against the common interest must be punished with death.
  19. We want the Roman law system changed for the German common law system.
  20. We want to change the system of schools and education, so that every hard-working German can have the chance of higher education.
    1. What is taught should concentrate on practical things
    1. Schools should teach civic affairs, so that children can become good citizens
    1. If poor parents cannot afford to pay the government should pay for education.
  21. The State must protect health standards by
    1. protecting mothers and infants
    1. stopping children from working
    1. making a law for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and
    1. supporting sports clubs for young men.
  22. We want to get rid of the old army and replace it with a people’s army that would look after the ordinary people, not just the rich officer-class.
  23. We want the law to stop politicians from being anti-German, and newspapers from writing about them. To make a German national press we demand:
    1. that all editors of, and writers in the German language newspapers are members of the nation (of a German race);
    1. foreign newspapers need permission from the government. They must not be printed in the German language;
    1. non-Germans cannot own or control German newspapers.
    1. any non-German who does own or control a newspaper will be made to leave Germany, and the newspaper closed down,
    1. newspapers which criticise the country or the government are not allowed.
    1. art and books which support foreign ideas should be banned.
  24. We want to allow all religions in the State, unless they offend the moral feelings of the German race. The NSDAP is Christian, but does not belong to any denomination. The NSDAP will fight the Jewish self-interest spirit, and believes that our nation will be strongest only if everyone puts the common interest before self-interest.
  25. We will
    1. create a strong central government for the Reich;
    1. give Parliament control over the entire government and its organizations;
    1. form groups based on class and job to carry out the laws in the various German states.

The leaders of the Party promise to work—if need be to sacrifice their very lives—to put this programme into action.

The virtue in consulting this century-old – now wholly discredited – document today lies perhaps in recognising how the ordinary-seeming logic of collective thinking in determining who belongs and what their interests are has long been a feature of our political life in South Africa, and remains so in 2020, and why it is necessary to call out the risks.

South Africa is not, and never was, a Nazi state. Germany wasn’t either, in February 1920.

[Picture: Bundesarchiv, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5369386]

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IRR head of media Michael Morris was a newspaper journalist from 1979 to 2017, covering, among other things, the international campaign against apartheid, from London, and, as a political correspondent in Cape Town, South Africa’s transition to democracy. He has written three books, the last being Apartheid, An Illustrated History, and has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT. He writes a fortnightly column in Business Day.