Text of the dispatch from the British Ambassador to Berlin, Sir Horace Rumbold, to Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson, 31 October 1930 (received by London 3 November 1930)

Sir,

During the recent election campaign [German Federal elections of 14 September 1930], the programme of the National Socialist party was little more than a drum which attracted the crowd. Because of its inconsistencies and manifest absurdities, the payment of too much attention to it then was apt to be misleading. Its immature exaggerations almost insisted that there could really be no substance in the National Socialist movement.

2. Since the remarkable successes of the National Socialists in the election, the position has altered. It was the revival of the national spirit and the hope of the re-birth of Germany which largely carried them to victory. Many supporters of the movement, even many young National Socialists themselves, knew little about the programme or paid little attention to it.

Now that the party has 107 seats and is the second largest in the Reichstag, the programme has come again into the limelight, and whether they like it or not, it is being forced upon the attention of the National Socialist leaders.

The moment, therefore, is appropriate for an examination of the programme in detail, and I have the honour to transmit herewith a memorandum which is a summary in translation of a commentary prepared by Herr Alfred Rosenberg, one of the official spokesmen of the party, explaining in detail each of the twenty-five points of the programme. This commentary was first produced in 1922 with the approval of Hitler and has been re-issued with an introduction dated the 20th September, 1930.

3. You will observe that the programme is declared to be unalterable because it is based on fixed principles. The leaders bind themselves to carry out its twenty-five points regardless of consequences, and, if necessary, at the cost of their own lives, and they declare that after having achieved them they will not produce new aims merely to keep the party alive by promoting artificial dissatisfaction. The final aim is a 'greater Germany,' to achieve which the programme demands the consolidation of all Germans into one great German State, equal rights for the German people with other nations, the abolition of the Treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain, and space and colonies to feed the nation and absorb the surplus population.

4. As regards the Jewish race, the programme is especially drastic. It declares that no Jew can be a German citizen, for a Jew is not of German blood and is not a fellow-countryman, and anybody not a German citizen can only live as a guest in Germany under laws applying to foreigners. Only citizens may occupy public offices and shall have the right to determine the leadership and legislation of the State, and all citizens must have the same rights and obligations.

An article designed to destroy the Jewish control of the press provides that only Germans may be editors and correspondents of newspapers printed in the German language, and financial participation in German newspapers, or the exertion of influence upon them, by non-Germans is forbidden under penalty of banishment. Non-German newspapers will require a State licence and may not be printed in German.

If the State cannot provide for its population, foreigners must be deported. All non-German immigration is to cease and all non-Germans who entered Germany since the 2nd August, 1914, are to be forced to leave the country. The object of this is to get rid of the numerous Jewish immigrants who came in from the East.

5. In the economic sphere, the programme declares that a citizen's first duty is spiritual or physical creation. Income not arising from manual or mental labour must be abolished and the servitude to interest must be broken. All war profits must be confiscated, and all hitherto syndicated industrial trusts must be nationalised. Participation in the profits of large scale enterprises is demanded.

Department stores must be nationalised and rented cheaply to small traders. The old age pension system must be widely extended. A law for the expropriation without compensation of land for public purposes, the abolition of interest based on land, and the stoppage of speculation in land is demanded. Those guilty of crime against the people, usurers, profiteers, &c., are to be punished with death, regardless of religion or race.

6. Roman law, which unduly protects the individual, must be replaced by a German common law to safeguard the honour and interests of the State. Educational reform is demanded, involving the bringing of the educational system into harmony with the practical requirements of life and the inculcation of the national idea into children from infancy. The exceptionally gifted shall be educated free by the State.

The State must improve the national health by providing for maternal and infant welfare, by forbidding child labour, promoting physical fitness through compulsory gymnastics and sport, and supporting athletic societies. Pornographic literature, &c., is to be suppressed. 'Mercenary troops' are to be abolished and compulsory military service reintroduced.

7. The party demands religious freedom, with safeguards for German moral feelings, adopts a positive Christianity and resists Jewish materialism in adopting the principle of 'public before private benefit.'

8. For the realisation of these plans, the party demands a strong central power represented in a political central Parliament with unlimited authority over the whole Reich.

9. Such a programme must obviously be embarrassing to the leaders of a party who are anxious to prove its fitness to participate in the Government. The programme is indeed 'Nationalist' in all its striving for a greater, better, cleaner and less corrupt Germany. That is the healthy side to this national movement with which anyone can sympathise. But it is also 'Socialist,' and in parts almost Communist, and something must be done to satisfy the Left wing, to honour the implications of the programme. Some gesture must at least be made in the direction of election promises. This explains the fantastic motions introduced at the opening of the Reichstag, the number of which was only limited by the early adjournment.

10. As Dr. Luther suggested in the conversation reported in my despatch No. 852 of the 24th October, it will suit the leaders very well if they can bring in these motions, have them rejected or laughed out by the Reichstag, and then proceed to something more really national and more constructive. But at the same time, the fact that within the party the loud pedal is on the 'Socialism' is now said to be beginning to have a disturbing effect upon outside supporters of the party, and especially upon those who have been providing it with funds. These people are beginning themselves to examine the programme more closely and to wonder. And within the party itself there are signs that the programme is beginning to pull the party in all directions.

11. The party leaders may succeed in overcoming these distempers, and it would be dangerous to assume that they will fail. Many people, however, whose wish may be father to the thought, are now claiming that there are at least indications that the party is beginning to break up. They point to the revolt of the editor of the 'Nationaler Sozialist,' Otto Strasser, who is practically a Communist, and whose brother Gregor is one of the spokesmen of the party; to the overweening ambition and growing defiance of the young Berlin leader, Dr. Goebbels, and to a joint Communist and National Socialist meeting which took place in Berlin a few days ago. Soon, they say, the party must split, the extremists going over to the Communists, the other block going over to Hugenberg, leaving a rump of only thirty to forty members.

12. To this view, Dr. Luther, as I have already reported, and a number of people who should be well informed, do not appear to subscribe. In these circumstances, it is particularly interesting that an inter-departmental conference of the competent officials of the Ministries of the Interior of the Reich and of Prussia, was held yesterday to discuss the present position of the National Socialist movement. A member of my staff was informed by an official of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs who attended the meeting, that its considered view was that there were no indications yet of a real split in the party, that Dr. Goebbels' defiance must not be taken too seriously, and that Otto Strasser was more likely to lose his paper and his editorial position, as well as being excluded from the party, than to be able to lead any successful revolt. Hitler, in fact, they were agreed, was still able, apparently whenever he wished, to exercise a remarkable influence over the whole party.

13. It is thus definitely too soon to attempt to forecast. All that is clear at the present moment is that, whether the National Socialist party succeeds in holding together in its present form, or whether it splits up, the revival of nationalism in Germany has come to stay. And as I have already indicated in previous despatches, this revival of nationalism cannot be ignored by any German Government, and it must result in the prosecution of a more forward foreign policy by Germany in the future.

I have, &c.

Horace Rumbold