There are a variety of ways to gain power. There are illegal means to gain power through brute force; one can also gain power legally by winning a majority in an election. There are revolutions, Putsches, uprisings. But each of these methods requires a political group to win the sympathies of the broad masses, if it wishes over the long run to maintain is power. But the sympathy of the people does not come of itself; it must be won.

The means of gaining that support is propaganda. The task of propaganda is not to discover a theory or to develop a program, rather to translate that theory and program into the language of the people, to make them comprehensible to the broad masses of the people. The goal of propaganda is to make what the theorists have discovered clear to the broad masses.

Theoreticians found a political movement. Propagandists follow close behind. The theoreticians give a movement its intellectual foundations, the propagandists puts the programmatic content of the movement into the coinage of the people, and spread it to them.

It would hardly be worthwhile to argue about who is most important in the struggle for power. The propagandist is nothing without the theorist, but the theorist is also nothing without the propagandist. One can't give political knowledge to the people without the proper means of propaganda. Even the most brilliant political theories will have no impact unless they are put in a form that the people can understand.

The great accomplishment of the National Socialist movement is that it created a synthesis of both elements of the art of politics.

The foundation of National Socialist theory is firm. Naturally it needs disciplined and thoughtful development, but the task of a worldview is not to explain the what of political life, rather the how. A worldview does not govern the things of life, rather the relationships of those things. The task of explaining this relationship in the details of public life, of persuading the broad masses of its desirability, is the task of our political propaganda.

No other political movement as understood the art of propaganda as well as the National Socialists. From its beginnings, it has put heart and soul into propaganda. What distinguishes it from all other political parties is the ability to see into the soul of the people and to speak the language of the man in the street. It uses all the means of modern technology. Leaflets, handbills, posters, mass demonstrations, the press, stage, film and radio--these are all tools of our propaganda. Whether or not they serve or harm the people depends on the use to which they are put.

In the long run, propaganda will reach the broad masses of the people only if at every stage it is uniform. Nothing confuses the people more than lack of clarity or aimlessness. The goal is not to present the common man with as many varied and contradictory theories as possible. The essence of propaganda is not in variety, rather the forcefulness and persistence with which one selects ideas from the larger pool and hammers them into the masses using the most varied methods.

Therefore, we named this magazine "Will and Way." The will of the National Socialist movement is laid out in its program. The way changes every day. Since we do not have political power, we can not realize the ideas of National Socialism. We must therefore give all our energy to achieving power. We will gain power only with the people, not against them. They will join us when it feels as we do, when it is persuaded that what we want is correct.

Thus National Socialist propaganda is the most important aspect of our political activity. It is in the foreground of our practical goals. Without it, all our knowledge would be fruitless, without effect. Propaganda must put knowledge in a fresh form. It must spread it to the people, it must convince people of the necessity of our knowledge. It wins new fighters for the movement. It makes members our of supporters and martyrs our of members.

Today we have a tight network of National Socialist propaganda throughout the country. It should be clear to any observer that we are preparing not only for the tasks of today, but for the future. National Socialist propaganda serves to educate the people. Its task is not only to win them for the tasks of today, but to assist in the transformation of the character of the broad masses. We are convinced that a new politics in Germany is possible only after a complete transformation of our national character, after an entirely new national way of thinking. This is our most pressing task, and in working for these tasks today we are doing the best preparatory work for the great political tasks of tomorrow.

-Dr. Joseph Goebbels, 1931