 The second factor was the 1939 beginning of the Second World War.—"Bernhard Bästlein" (30 November 1942 in a written statement to the Gestapo, while under their interrogation)

The war that began in 1939 had "awoken all memories of the 1914-1918 war and strengthened his conviction that as long as the capitalist social order existed, there would, again and again, be wars which would destroy all feeling in human society and likewise result in tremendous loss of material wealth.