At the end of 1919, I entered the Party—not before Hitler, as it is contended here, but later. In this original Party I was assigned Number 625 as a member.
I did not participate in setting up the program. I was present, however, when this program was read and commented upon by Hitler on 24 February 1920.
DR. THOMA: Then you gave a justification for the Party program and probably wanted to solve the problems which referred to the social and political crisis. How did you picture the solution?
ROSENBERG: In response to different inquiries regarding the 25 points of the program, I wrote a commentary at the end of 1922, which has been read to the Tribunal in fragments. Our general attitude at the time may perhaps be stated briefly as follows:
The technical revolution of the 19th Century had certain social and mental consequences. Industrialization and the clamor for profit dominated life and created the industrial state and the metropolis with all its backyards and estrangement from nature and history.
At the turn of the century, many people who wanted to regain their homeland and its history turned against this one-sided movement. The revival of tradition, folk song and folklore of the past, originated with the youth movement of that time. The works of art, for instance, by Professor Schultze-Naumburg and by some poets were a characteristic protest against this one-sided movement of the time, and it is here that National Socialism attempted to gain a foothold—in full consciousness though, that it was a modern movement and not a movement of retrospective sentimentality. It linked itself with the social movement of Stöcker and the national movement of Schönerer in Austria without using them in their entirety as a model.
I should like to add that the name “National Socialism,” I believe, originated in the Sudetenland, and the small German Labor Party was founded under the name of “National Socialist German Labor Party.”
If I may say so, what finally animated us in essence and the reason for our calling ourselves National Socialists—for, you see, many terrible things have been delivered during these 3 months by the Prosecution, but nothing has been said about National Socialism—we were, at the time, aware of the fact that there were two hostile camps in Germany, that in both camps millions of decent Germans were fighting; and we found ourselves facing the problem of what could be acceptable to both these camps from the viewpoint of national unity and what was preventing an understanding between these two camps. In short, at that time as well as later we explained to the proletarian side, that even if the class-conflict had been and still was a factor in social and political life, nevertheless, as an ideological basis and permanent maxim it would mean eternal disunity of the nation. The direction of a movement for social appeasement or any kind of social conflict by an international center was the second decisive obstacle to social reconciliation. The call for social justice, raised generally by labor, was, however, justified, worthy, and necessary. Concerning the bourgeoisie, we believed we would be able to establish that in some cases the reactionary caste prejudice of privileged circles had worked to the detriment of the people and secondly that the representation of national interests should not be based on privileges of certain classes; on the contrary, the demand for national unity and dignified representation was the right attitude on their part. From this resulted the ideas which Hitler...
THE PRESIDENT: Dr. Thoma, would you try to confine the witness to the charges which are against him? The charges against the defendants are not that they attempted to reconstruct Germany, but that they used this form of reconstruction with a view to attacking outside—races and nations outside.
DR. THOMA: But, in my opinion, we have to devote some time to Rosenberg’s train of thought to determine the motives for his actions; but I will now ask him this: