Struggle and War
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Description
Eggers gave Struggle and War to his comrades on the first day he took to the field. It is essentially a short compilation of excerpts, both prose and poetry, from his numerous other works.
Kurt Eggers was a famous writer, producing plays, radio drama, musical comedies, folk stories, walking songs, martial songs, and chants. His verse was widely used in NSDAP ceremonies and events. He was the editor-in-chief of the “Das Schwarze Korps” (The Black Corps), the official newspaper of the SS. His works were highly respected throughout the higher party Leadership.
He would die at the age of 37 on the Eastern Front leading a Counter-Attack of the SS Wiking Division despite about being greatly out-numbered by Bolshevik forces in 1943.
EXCERPT
There is only one morality, the morality of the warrior.
That means: The warrior is the one consecrated for the final deed. In the fulfillment of the law of the demand of duty, he has dedicated himself with his own life solely to the community.
He has separated himself the most from the concern for his own well-being. He knows neither reservations nor excuses. His conviction is the deed.
According to the evaluation of the community, he is at the same time good and strong.
The community honours itself in that it honors the warrior.
It consecrates his deed in that it makes them the measure of virtue.
The community receives the teachings of virtue from the warrior.
The warrior teaches: Be brave!
That means: Overcome the fear that drives you to fearful preservation of one’s own life. Remember that your folk’s future rests in your deed. Reflect that your life, your struggle and your death are examples of the strong life.
Do not forget for a moment that your folk’s young crew follow your every step with passionate eyes.
Being brave does not mean playing with life, rather to employ it systematically for the achievement of the freedom and the shaping of the future of the eternal folk.
–
Be noble!
That means: Remember that you are not a murderer and do not serve senseless destruction. Reflect that your deed is the honor of the nation. But your struggle is all the more hard and pitiless. High-mindedness gives the enemy respect, but has no weak compassion for him. The noble man also expects no compassion from the enemy, he only expects the same respect that he gives him.
–
Die proudly!
That means: Remember that your death is the fulfillment of the law and that death is the crowning of duty. Remember that your proud death helps the youths to overcome the horror.
Whoever dies proudly, robs death of terror.
–
The life of the warrior is simultaneously lonely and yet most closely bound to the community.
Lonely, because he alone must harden his heart in order to defy the dangers.
Lonely, because he knows that death means the greatest loneliness. And he fights under the shadow of death.
Lonely is his life, because it has grown from the pettiness of daily life with its fears and cares into the height of the deed, from which daily life and the mass chained to it appear to him very small and unimportant. The life of the warrior is as turbulent and demanding in taking as in giving. In its wildness it is as overwhelmingly great as in its readiness for death.
If the warrior succumbs for a moment to the temptations of pleasure, he can then shake off the dirt.
The weak man would sink in the dirt.
Where the warrior hardly soils his ankle, the swamp swallows the head of the weak man.
The weak man has a different morality, because his strength of resistance is different.
The warrior’s life is closely bound to the community.
Rooted in it, grown from it, interwoven with it into closest comradeship is his life.
His deed would be meaningless without the community.
His war would be arson without the community.
41 pages
