Please see the introduction to this and other articles by Prof. Dr. Walter Groß which can be viewed here. That page gives a more detailed reference to this pieces.
The National Socialist Way of Life by Prof. Dr. Walter Groß, 1943.
National Socialism as a political movement will have reached its goal when the Reich has ultimately secured its proper position among other nations. National Socialism as a Weltanschauung [worldview] will only have completed its historical mission when it prevails among all classes in Germany and thus unites the nation in a new character. The political realization of National Socialism will have been reached in a powerful Reich and a new order of living space. The National Socialist Weltanschauung, however has to materialize in the attitude and lifestyles of our nation and its inhabitants.
In National Socialist Germany, life will be very different from what it used to be while many eternal values of our historical past will remain valid for the future as well. In some fields however, the prevailing attitude of German life will have to be significantly different from traditional lifestyles due to the new triumphant Weltanschauung! The National Socialist Weltanschauung and its practical effect on German lifestyle is based on two supporting pillars:
On the one hand, personality is given a chance to unfold and the individual receives an education that is nearly perfect. On the other hand, the individual is ready to contribute to the welfare of the community. These are the two poles that generate the productive potential of National Socialist Germany.
Developing and shaping his abilities makes the individual happy and conscious, and doing this is the prerequisite for the nation to receive his genuine efforts that are of highest value for the community. Only these efforts for the community add meaning and ultimate nobility to the individual personality and its development. In morbid times, personality and community became opposites, but for us they are a full harmonic chord in which the individual strings of life sound together.
For a National Socialist German the key note in life is happiness and joy of life. We do not speak here of a flat and superficial attitude that doesn’t know life or tries to avoid the depths, gravity and pains of life. It is rather the attitude and spirit of a healthy, strong man to whom life itself is joyful and full of beauty; just like the unencumbered child that cheerfully loves its existence. For the growing and maturing man ever struggling with obstacles and difficulties, hard and troublesome periods in life only mean a chance for him to prove his power and they leave him with an elevated existence and a feeling of inner joy. Therefore, the National Socialist way of life affirms everything that increases happiness. Our approach to life only excludes all destructive and degrading influences: the abuse of physical and mental resources, the reduction of individual capacities through an insane consumption of stimulating and inciting drugs, the negligent endangering of the individual’s health and life, which belong not only to the individual, but to the nation as well. Whatever generates strength and happiness is good and therefore required by the new German lifestyle in the same way that all destructive and corrupting influences, whether they affect the nation or the individual, are excluded.
The statement above is valid for both sides of our existence: for the body and its development as well as for the mind and soul. A trained and controlled powerful body stands equal in intelligent sport to a mature mind and elevated thinking skills in a great variety of experiences in spiritual things and in the field of the arts. Both sides are united in the fully and completely developed human being, and only that human is suitable to serve the future of our nation.
In both fields, physical and mental, the individual is limited in his possibilities and disposed towards certain special abilities. Long before our own consciousness awakens we are already determined in this matter by the inexorable laws of heredity. To these laws we owe all variations and differences among individuals as well as the abundant wealth of talents and abilities in the community of our nation. This is why the National Socialist lifestyle does not offer the illusionary phantom of a desolate egalitarianism, or compulsory standards for everybody. The National Socialist ideal is not a silly fashion and not a standardized type of man. On the contrary, our goal is a variety of individual personalities, all educated and trained according to their talents. Only this variety grants a harmony that elevates the individual and bestows the nation with historical power and beauty.
Along with happiness, courage is a dominant value for the new German man. National Socialism created the heroic attitude best displayed in the great military tradition of Germany, the nation’s duty and ideal. Courage proves itself best in times of war. In peaceful times we must also be led in a brave and heroic manner, a demand that addresses both men and women.
In everyday life there are many opportunities to put ourselves to the test: never to avoid difficulties, to walk straight even if there are easier, crooked ways to go, to estimate a goal higher than one’s own laziness, to demand the most from oneself and to ignore lazy wishes, to obey the great national laws rather than to cultivate one’s selfishness, to follow one’s own conscience in grave personal decisions and to take responsibility instead of hiding behind cheap excuses and cowardly submissiveness. All this is courage and is a required part of the lifestyle of the new German man educated by National-Socialism. Mental courage, the fight and struggle with great new ideas, belongs here as well. In the end, only those creeds and beliefs are of value for the nation and the individual which were achieved through honest endeavor, and not those that were gained through indolent repetition of what one has heard from others.
It is courage as well to suffer from inner and outer wounds and pains without getting depressed. Discontent and pessimism, resignation and despair basically prove weakness and cannot exist with the brave attitude of a new generation of Germans.
Beyond one’s own life, beyond the fights and victories of the individual and the nation an eternal future arises for Germans in this world. We will secure our future by the method of new generations who, children today, men tomorrow, ancestors of a new generation the next day, inseparably link us with the past and the future. National Socialism considers these bonds and therefore family and children to be essential elements in National Socialist lifestyle. It means a special fulfillment in any man’s life to be a family-member. Giving birth to many children and raising them is the highest goal for a woman. Family is necessary for anybody unless he wants to carelessly dispense with the strongest forces in human life. Moreover, family and children are the only guarantee for the eternal existence of a nation, and therefore a demand from our national future to the present generation. The rising German Reich, enormously powerful and protected by the sword, now and in coming decades needs families with uncountable children of the finest German blood to fill the spaces we open up and to permanently secure what the courage of the present generations wins for us.
The combination of private life and community service is perfectly expressed in the optimistic large families of National Socialism. It is within the family that the most intimate power of the love and strong tension between the sexes lead to complete fulfillment in private life and to a meaningful contribution to the development of the entire nation. We are equally opposed to negation and unnatural asceticism as we are to the selfishness of those who do not want to commit themselves. In this way, families and children grow up as the nation’s most precious commodity as they combine individual happiness with the profits and gains of the community.
With this attitude, pride in their race is a natural matter for both men and women. In dealing with foreigners the German attitude will show respect, comradeship and cooperation along with an unshakeable self-confidence and a racial pride which identifies a sin against blood as a nation’s fatal sin.
It is this attitude that puts the National Socialist way of life to the crucial historical test. Destiny will always deny to some of us complete fulfillment in life. Those denied fulfillment however, are of equal value and they will work twice as hard so that their performance will compensate for what they were not granted in another field. We cannot speak of a true National Socialist attitude in a case where we do not find the yearning for family and children combined with the knowledge that a nation blessed with children means happiness and duty. For it is only through children that we participate in eternal German life and only a superficial or timid man does not feel the need for such participation. Everybody who lived his life in good days and bad days in accordance with these principles will face death with calmness. He will not desire or carelessly seek his death because even in his darkest hours, his life is meaningful and worth living. He will not fear the end either and piteously flee from it, because death is a part of life, as natural and inescapable as birth. Just like all universal laws of nature, death is forgiving in its pitilessness. What comes after death, nobody knows. In this field, the individual may follow his knowledge or instinct in what he wants to think and believe. In any case, a happy and brave life includes a courageous and confident death. Life has been good and meaningful and coming generations will carry on and complete the work of the person that death took out of our hands.
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[Source: Ich Kämpfe, Zentralverlag der NSDAP Franz Eher Nachf. München, 1943. Herausgegeben vom Hauptkulturamt in der Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP. Zusammentstellung und für den Inhalt verantwortlich: Hermann Liese. Als Manuskript gedruckt. Sonderdruck zur Erinnerung an die Aufnahme in die NSDAP. Reproduktion und Offserdruck: Carl Werner. Reichenbach i.V. (German PDF) Translated into English as I Fight by Ray Cowdery, Copyright 1992, 1999 (Ray R. Cowdery), 2007 (Victory Publishing, Ltd.) ISBN: 097005677X. (English PDF) Original German: Nationalsozialistische Lebensführung von Hauptdienstleiter Prof. Dr. W. Groß, Leiter des Rassenpolitischen Amtes der NSDAP. Page 127 of the English translation. Citation by Nathan R. Lawrence.]
See also To Live as a National Socialist by Klas Lund