Eugen Hadamovsky - The Necessity of Action

 

Already as a student, Eugen Hadamovsky belonged to the “Schutzregiment Berlin,” founded by Colonel von Luck. After the Kapp Putsch it used the cover name “Olympia.” After the French invasion of the Ruhr he volunteered for the 5th company of the I.R. 9, the “Gardeschützen-Traditionskompanie.” When this organization was banned again in 1925, Hadamovsky went to Italy and Spain. He had already done some study of technical and political matters at educational institutions in Berlin and held various jobs throughout Europe and Northern Africa, including being a worker and a journalist. In 1927/28 he worked as a fitter and mechanic in Arrigoriagga, a suburb of the northern Spanish industrial city Bilbao.

In 1923 Hadamovsky had attended the Führer’s meetings in Munich and National Socialist demonstrations. In 1926 participated in Dr. Goebbels’s first meeting in Braunschweig. After his return to Germany, he was involved in Dr. Goebbels’s newspaper Der Angriff, then a Berlin weekly. He also became politically active in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He developed a plan for a party radio organization, and was appointed the first Gau radio warden of the NSDAP by Dr. Goebbels, after which he was appointed as department head in the Reichspropagandaleitung in Munich.

During the takeover of power on 30 January 1933, Hadamovsky on his own initiative organized an evening broadcast from the Reich Chancellory, then organized radio broadcasts of Adolf Hitler’s mass meetings during the election campaigns. He was then named Reichssendeleiter.

After 1933 he created the Volksempfänger. In 1935 he began the world’s first television broadcasting company. In 1936 he participated in army maneuvers with radio propaganda units that he himself organized, the forerunners of our present propaganda companies. In 1940 he was deputy head of the Radio Department of the Propaganda Ministry, in 1941 of the ministerial office of this ministry.

As a soldier he participated in missions over Poland, France, England, and the Soviet Union. During the Polish campaign was a company commander. The Führer awarded him the Iron Cross, First and Second Classes, and the Military Service Cross, First Class. As first lieutenant with the Luftwaffe, he was a radio checker for the propaganda companies of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht.

Reich Leader and Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels appointed Hadamovsky chief of staff in the Reichsleitung of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1942. In this position, Chief of Staff Hadamovsky works with party and propaganda activities in the entire Reich.

The source: Badener Zeitung, 6 November 1943, p. 2.

***In 1943, Hadamovsky volunteered for the Wehrmacht armed forces. Toward the end of World War II, he joined the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division and died in combat, shot through the heart, in the rank of an Obersturmführer (first lieutenant), fighting at the head of his company on the Eastern Front early in March 1945 at Hölkewiese near Rummelsburg in Pomerania. After his death, Goebbels wrote of him as one of the best comrades, an energetic and loyal companion and an old friend. Hadamovsky is buried in Endgrablage: Block 3 Reihe 31 Grab 1533 - 1548, German military cemetery Neumark / Stare Czarnowo, Poland.

Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels determines the program and "restructures" Reichs-Rundfunk. He appoints NSDAP functionary Eugen Hadamovsky (standing) as the new director of Reichs-Rundfunk.

The Necessity of Action

The German-American Hansen wrote in 1920: “The German people and its former ruling class have learned nothing from the most terrible experience that has befallen any people.”

If one looks at the history of German nationalism, that was true for over a decade. This marvelous nation, the most intelligent, disciplined, and courageous in the world, has seen an almost unbroken selection of its worst qualities in its leadership. They understood neither the spirit of the world or of their own people. They spoke when they should have kept silent and were silent when there was a chance to speak. They had neither organized belief nor the courage to use power.

The former ruling class, which had given up without a fight in 1918 and groveled under the red boot, began to complain when fiery nationalism sprang from the depths and carried the masses along like an avalanche. Intellect without strength feels inferior, and that is dangerous. That man of the people [Hitler] was too powerful for their tastes. They laid traps and began talking of “brains.” Things, however, did not depend on “knowledge,” with which they had failed so miserably, but on ability. The nation needed his strength, not their “brains.”

Bismarck noted that he could not repress disturbing thought when considered the extent to which our ruling circle had lost political ability. He said that the first Chancellor who reached his position because of seniority would be Germany’s misfortune He was right. Mr. Betmann-Hollweg was the top student from a model school in Schulporta. He reached the office Reich Chancellor in all the right ways, provided one ignores such things as fighting ability, propaganda, and strength. He ably led us to national despair.

This system of national weakness bred good soldiers without political instincts, and politicians without backbones. It fell apart attempting the impossible. Today, the “brain” with his academic record or the nonpolitical soldier who seeks political office proclaims his political judgment to the nation and to history.

Germany has always had the best soldiers in the world. It was an enemy general, not a German one, who said that the German soldier had always been worth three of the enemy. But a soldier without political instincts is a mercenary. The soldier must carry a sense of the political system in his blood. And although it is his duty to defend it to the limits of his ability, it is the duty of the politician to avoid the necessity of doing so. Hitler has properly said: “The duty of a statesman is not to heroically lead a nation to defeat, but to preserve its existence.” This requires politicians with a military, or morBettmane generally speaking, fighting spirit [Blut] who do not confuse politics with their official careers. The one as well as the other, soldier and politician, must be willing to go to the limits. There is no use of power which, in the face of necessity, should not be used to defend the whole.

For the first time since that lone wolf Bismarck, the German race has a man of political genius, who is above all a dogmatist of great ability. Hitler will live in German history.

Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, who was popularly called the Soldier-King, created the loyal Prussian civil service which became a model to the world. Likewise, Hitler took the active, restless, and strong-willed elements of our people, organized them into the National Socialist movement, stamped it with his personality, and added an unprecedented aggressiveness and a flexible political will. The creation of the Nazi Party will hold a place in history.

No one knows what the end of the German drama will be, but this much is certain. This noble nation, possessing the best cultured people in the world, cannot continue in the center of a ring of greedy and uncivilized nations if it is not in future decades to be torn apart by actual or spiritual (as was the case during the last war) civil strife. Some say that enemy propaganda won the World War. More accurately, divisions in the German national will lost it. Whoever struggles with himself, whose soul is torn by conflicting emotions, cannot capably direct his attentions outwards because all his energies are required for the internal struggle. It is no different for a great nation than for the individual. National power depends on a unity of the national will. There is no way for Germany’s fate to improve that does not begin with national union.

Fichte said in one of his speeches:

No nation that has sunk into a state of despondency can rescue itself by the usual and previously successful methods. If their application was useless when the nation was in possession of all its strength, of what use will they be when the greater part is missing....

Every German who still believes that he is a part of a nation, who thinks highly and honorably of it, who hopes and strives for it, who builds and supports it, should eliminate all uncertainty from his faith….

The goals of spiritual reconstruction cannot be stated more beautifully or more nobly, nor the use of all means better justified. Uncertainty of belief means diversity and doubt; it means the paralysis of hope, will, and action. It should be replaced by a certainty of the unity of political beliefs in order to give the nation certainty and unity of aspiration and action.

The source: Eugen Hadamovsky, Propaganda und nationale Macht: Die Organisation der öffentlichen Meinung für die nationale Politik (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1933).