PRINCIPIOS CONSTITUCIONALES EN MATERIA FISCAL

It was one of those nights of this unforgettable winter; the fierce frost made the step in the snow sound metallic and the iron of our panzers get so cold that the hand twitched at the touch of the grip as if it had grabbed glowing steel.

The sky had already become pale and the stars had lost their radiance when we, coming from rounds, entered the guardhouse.

The small oven still crackled, and we added plenty of coal before we sat down on the small foot-stools in order to gratefully drink the steaming tea that the comrades handed us.

We did not want to lay down. So we lit cigars and began to relate.

It was now already half a year since we had mounted early one morning and turned on the motors in order to drive into enemy land.

Only half a year?

The plentitude of experiences was so great that we thought we had done nothing else for our whole life than to fight! And many a one among us had previously been in Spain, had fought in a foreign land under a different sky, under the flag of another folk, for the idea of Europe's new order. Names fell of lands and states, of folks and cities. Madrid and Vienna, Prague and Warsaw. And around each name round a wreath of memories of unique and unforgettable experiences.

Sometimes our voice became softer, when we spoke of this or that comrade, whom the earth now covered somewhere out there.

Soldier fate!

The term suddenly stood over us like a question, demanding answer.

What is the fate of the soldier?

Is it only the waiting for the order, whose execution can have both as result, glory or death? Is it only the obedient wrestling with the unknown and uncertain power of fate, which lets the one pass through a thousand adventures unscathed and rips the other apart before he can fire the first shot at the enemy in the first attack?

What is the fate of the soldier?

The soldier who saw comrades fall, who often enough felt a fearful premonition in his heart of the proximity of death, sees in fate not that dark, destructive power of which the superstitious are afraid, which the fools aim to uncover and which the stupid want to evade through oracle.

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For the serious soldier become hard, fate reveals itself as gigantic dual, which life and death wage with each other. As dual that – whatever the result may be – must be endured honorably and bravely.

The human being of security thinks himself safe through the sly calculation of all possibilities. He expends effort, fear, and worry in order to be "equipped" amidst the adversities. The soldier knows that there is no evasion of the dual. The attempt would be not only cowardly, it would also be useless and foolish. Hence he pitches in and compels the moment through the deed.

Being prepared bestows upon him the genuine feeling of security and superiority.

His fate is not called death! That would be a horrible, paralyzing thinking! His fate is called struggle! But this means escalated life! This means being alert! This means being smart! But this also means risking the high prize of life!

Fate?

The soldier fights in the awareness of duty, which carries him far beyond the narrow thought and the fearful calculation of the secured. He knows himself as executor of an idea, to fight for which means proud happiness.

We spoke of how the war of 1939 ever more drew us under its spell.

Were we not – despite cold, sometimes tiring waiting – with joy soldiers?

So many a one among us thinks in quiet hours about his wife, about his children, about the hardly imaginable joys of a coming peace. And too gladly does the soldier let his yearning orbit around planes of the work of a producing, hoping, and shaping.

And nonetheless, the thoughts very soon return to the war, to his duty and hence to his fate.

Fate?

And although the labor pains of this war also drove us ourselves into distant lands and to foreign people, we have always surmised and known that we are the bearers of our folk's will. Of the will for freedom! Freedom, however, without just order and order without bond to duty, does not exist. Hence whoever claims to fight for freedom must also be a fighter for the genuine order – for the just order of values, deceitful phrases should not be his freedom feeling.

Because we soldiers have sworn ourselves to this freedom idea, war revealed to us its law, which we aim to fulfill from full heart.

The love for duty lets us no longer "endure" war, it instead turns with all its bitter possibilities into an honoring service for us.

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We thought about the hour of departure. None of us wanted to hear patriotic expressions, and each of us convulsed with disgust, if he had to read the base flattery from the secure.

We did not want to be "revered" at all. We ourselves, after all, are bearers of honor!

Back then, we already felt that we went to a war that would bring the decisive battle of whole worlds. This war – this, too, is a part of the "fate belief" such as we understand it – is a milestone of our great revolution of our folk, which has risen up to find itself! Hence we have devoted ourselves to this war with all fibers of our heart.

Fate?

This war should let Greater Germany, which we have sought in our yearning as long as we were aware of our soul, into the homeland of our folk.

This idea, which assumed form in a warlike reality, has become our fate.

In order to do justice to this duty, we have mounted. And we will not dismount until we can report the execution of the iron command.

We?

That is not you and I. The foreign earth may well cover us then.

We, that is the soldiers arising again and again from the great river of the folk, who carry the same blood, the same yearning, the same will as you and I. The brothers and comrades of the same "fate".

We had not noticed that the early sun had cast its bright red upon the sparkling and glistening snow.

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