| “ | It was Adolf Hitler who declared war against all this. In Austria, with her various peoples, he had realised that nationalism was something that had to be defended ever anew; now he saw that it also would have to be defended in the Reich even though here it was a birthright. In the Sudetenland a small National Socialist party was already in existence -- yet another reason why he should found his own. Hitler had come the conclusion that a just socialism had, PER SE, nothing to do with class war and internationalism. To perpetuate class war was wrong. It would have to be eliminated. Thus he became an opponent of Marxism in all of its manifestations, and characterised it as a philosophy of government inimical to both the state and the working class. As far as the workers were concerned it was, therefore, a question of renouncing this doctrine as well as their opposition to both the farmer and the property owner. The middle classes, too, had every reason to revise their attitude. They had failed to provide the working classes in their hour of dire need with leaders conversant with their requirements and had left them to the tender mercy of international propagandists. German nationalism, Hitler believed, was hemmed in by the nobility, while an entirely false conceit separated the middle classes from the broad mass of the productive population. The bourgeoisie would have to shed its prejudices before it would once again be entitled to leadership. To end Germany's fratricidal strife he proposed to gather together all active nationalists of every party, and fighters for social justice from every camp, to form a new movement. | ” |
| — Alfred Rosenberg, Memoirs, 1945 | ||