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CHAPTER I
Chapter 1: how Ah became a nationalist, his view of himself as a painter, death of parents, desire to not become a civil servant
My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously.
Did he know his father?
That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small brain.
Question of why the Austrians didn't fight in the war
That I had an aptitude for drawing was an admitted fact.
Those who know something of the juvenile spirit can understand how youth will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry.
Advice from Hitler on how to influence children
To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events. The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.
the poison of foreign races was eating into the body of our people, and even Vienna was steadily becoming more and more a non-German city.
As a logical consequence of these convictions, there arose in me a feeling of intense love for my German-Austrian home and a profound hatred for the Austrian State.
And now that the Realschule had recognized and acknowledged my aptitude for drawing,
Chapter 2 summary—wow, this is chilling. Starts talking about how hard a time he had and how he became very poor. Still thinks he is a great artist. He thought antisemitism was bad, but was attracted to antisemetic newspapers due to his perception that the mainline press was not patriotic. Slowly warmed up to the ideas of antisemitism and began to see the Jews as dirty, nefarious, in charge of the press and films. Transferring his anger at Marxism to the Jews. At the end of the chapter he is viewing opposing the Jews as doing God’s work.
Here’s the thing—I could see Hitler’s message being packaged as a message that would be very attractive to a fairly large percentage of the American public—does your economic situation stink? Blame the dirty immigrants who are diluting our superior culture. Sickening.
easily. At the Realschule I was by far the best student in the drawing class,
was during this period that my eyes were opened to two perils, the names of which I scarcely knew hitherto and had no notion whatsoever of their terrible significance for the existence of the German people. These two perils were Marxism and Judaism.
This method is: first, to create better fundamental conditions of social development by establishing a profound feeling for social responsibilities among the public; second, to combine this feeling for social responsibilities with a ruthless determination to prune away all excrescences which are incapable of being improved.
eliminating the fundamental deficiencies in our economic and cultural life - deficiencies which necessarily bring about the degradation of the individual or at least lead him towards such degradation.
I can fight only for something that I love. I can love only what I respect. And in order to respect a thing I must at least have some knowledge of it.
He wants people educated to the supposed greatness of Germany so they become patriotic
chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses.
I was fortunate in having a good memory and intelligence to assist me.
According to Hitler, Hitler was brilliant
The more I understood the methods of physical intimidation that were employed, the more sympathy I had for the multitude that had succumbed to it.
Knowledge of the Jews is the only key whereby one may understand the inner nature and therefore the real aims of Social Democracy.
To-day it is hard and almost impossible for me to say when the word 'Jew' first began to raise any particular thought in my mind. I do not remember even having heard the word at home during my father's lifetime. If this name were mentioned in a derogatory sense I think the old gentleman would just have considered those who used it in this way as being uneducated reactionaries. In the course of his career he had come to be more or less a cosmopolitan, with strong views on nationalism, which had its effect on me as well. In school, too, I found no reason to alter the picture of things I had
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As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their Faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic anti-Semitism.
And so I believe to-day that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.
Wow, this book really goes from super evil to super boring. Hitler believed that might makes right and the Austrian government failed because they didn’t have a strong central leader. He didn’t like socialism/Marxism, but he also disliked parliamentarianism. He felt that theConsensus of a large group of parliamentarians removed responsibility from individuals and made politicians tentative and unable to make bold choices. In this chapter he expressed and admiration for religion, as long is that religion was first German, and the church is mission came secondary. Again race is at the root of all problems
a man should not publicly take part in politics before he has reached the age of thirty,
The Press is the chief means employed in the process of political 'enlightenment'. It represents a kind of school for adults. This educational activity, however, is not in the hands of the State but in the clutches of powers which are partly of a very inferior character.
It is always a majority of ignorant and incompetent people who decide on each measure;
If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right but also the duty of every individual citizen.
my opinion, the wreck of the Pan-German Movement in Austria must be attributed to three causes. The first of these consisted in the fact that the leaders did not have a clear concept of the importance of the social problem, particularly for a new movement which had an essentially revolutionary character.
From this failure resulted the second cause of its rapid decline. The position of the Germans in Austria was already desperate when Pan-Germanism arose.
If the struggle on behalf of a Weltanschhauung is not conducted by men of heroic spirit who are ready to sacrifice, everything, within a short while it will become impossible to find real fighting followers who are ready to lay down their lives for the cause. A man who fights only for his own existence has not much left over for the service of the community.
no great idea, no matter how sublime and exalted it may appear, can be realized in practice without the effective power which resides in the popular masses.
The masses are first set in motion, along a definite direction,
Therefore Protestantism will always take its part in promoting German ideals as far as concerns moral integrity or national education, when the German spiritual being or language or spiritual freedom are to be defended: because these represent the principles on which Protestantism itself is grounded. But this same Protestantism violently opposes every attempt to rescue the nation from the clutches of its mortal enemy; because the Protestant attitude towards the Jews is more or less rigidly and dogmatically fixed. And yet this is the first problem which has to be solved, unless all attempts to
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The only way to remedy the evil I have been speaking of is to train the Germans from youth upwards to an absolute recognition of the rights of their own people, instead of poisoning their minds, while they are still only children, with the virus of this curbed 'objectivity', even in matters concerning the very maintenance of our own existence.
Political parties have no right to meddle in religious questions except when these relate to something that is alien to the national well-being and thus calculated to undermine racial customs and morals.
The art of leadership, as displayed by really great popular leaders in all ages, consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention into sections.
anti-Semitism of the Christian-Socialists was based on religious instead of racial principles. The reason for this mistake gave rise to the second error also. The founders of the Christian-Socialist Party were of the opinion that they could not base their position on the racial principle if they wished to save Austria, because they felt that a general disintegration of the State might quickly result from the adoption of such a policy. In the opinion of the Party chiefs the situation in Vienna
Now it is unfortunately true that only too often the best nations - or, to speak more exactly, the only really cultured nations, who at the same time are the chief bearers of human progress - have decided, in their blind pacifism, to refrain from the acquisition of new territory and to be content with 'internal colonization.' But at the same time nations of inferior quality succeed in getting hold of large spaces for colonization all over the globe.
Why could I not have been born a hundred years ago? I used to ask myself. Somewhere about the time of the Wars of Liberation, when a man was still of some value even though he had no 'business'. Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that I had arrived too late on this terrestrial globe, and I felt chagrined at the idea that my life would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly lines. As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so turned out futile.
In regard to the part played by humane feeling, Moltke stated that in time of war the essential thing is to get a decision as quickly as possible and that the most ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the most humane. When people attempt to answer this reasoning by highfalutin talk about aesthetics, etc., only one answer can be given. It is that the vital questions involved in the struggle of a nation for its existence must not be subordinated to any aesthetic considerations. The yoke of slavery is and always will remain the most unpleasant experience that mankind can endure. Do
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Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people.
Propaganda has as little to do with science as an advertisement poster has to do with art, as far as concerns the form in which it presents its message. The art of the advertisement poster consists in the ability of the designer
