Mein Kampf

by Adolf Hitler

He makes the most extraordinary allegations without so much as an attempt to prove them. Often there is no visible connection between one paragraph and the next.

There are, however, certain traits of Hitler's style that are peculiarly German and do present a problem in translation. Chief among these are the length of the sentences, the substantives, and the German particles.

The substantives are a different matter. Here it has been necessary to make greater changes, because in many cases the use of verbal nouns is simply incompatible with the English language.

Mention it and a conversation can turn awkward; say its name and tempers can rise. Some countries have banned it, and others have prohibited new translations. Reprintings have become minor media events, eliciting protests and sometimes lawsuits.

These measures may seem extreme to many Americans; we cherish our First Amendments rights and find censorship anathema.

Commit the evil to memory in order to reject it; reject the evil, but do not let yourself forget it.

His greatest successes took place in the Bavarian army, in which he served with some distinction as a message runner during World War I and as a propaganda officer afterward.

Written relatively early in Hitler's political career, Mein Kampf avoids points that might alienate potential supporters; its silence on the subject of Christianity, given Hitler's documented antagonism toward that religion, is the most noteworthy example.

Hitler's contribution to the history of ideas can be found in his clear and forceful articulation of numerous theories already in circulation during the early twentieth century rather than in any original thoughts of his own.

Jews were commonly barred from hotels and country clubs in the United States; and even Hitler's nemesis, Winston Churchill, spoke openly about the "sinister confederacy" of "international Jews" when referring to communism.

Each aspect of Hitler's ideology existed elsewhere; Hitler's achievement lay in weaving them together and presenting them as a heady brew that the demoralized and economically struggling German people could not refuse.

This is yet another lesson to take from Mein Kampf the lesson of vigilance and responsibility, of not closing our eyes to the evil around us.

One blood demands one Reich.

All attempts on my father's part to inspire me with love or pleasure in this profession by stories from his own life accomplished the exact opposite. I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time and being compelled to force the content of a whole life into blanks that had to be filled out.'

This sifting process began at school. For the remarkable fact about the language struggle is that its waves strike hardest perhaps in the school, since it is the seed-bed of the coming generation.

To `learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.

To an ever-increasing extent world history became for me an inexhaustible source of understanding for the historical events of the present; in other words, for politics. I do not want to `learn' it, I want it to instruct me.

Concerned over my illness, my mother finally consented to take me out of the Realschule and let me attend the Academy. These were the happiest days of my life and seemed to me almost a dream; and a mere dream it was to remain. Two years later, the death of my mother put a sudden end to all my high-flown plans. It was the conclusion of a long and painful illness which from the beginning left little hope of recovery. Yet it was a dreadful blow, particularly for me. I had honored my father, but my mother I had loved.

obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.

In this period my eyes were opened to two menaces of which I had previously scarcely known the names, and whose terrible importance for the existence of the German people I certainly did not understand: Marxism and Jewry.

I do not know which is more terrible: inattention to social misery such as we see every day among the majority of those who have been favored by fortune or who have risen by their own efforts, or else the snobbish, or at times tactless and obtrusive, condescension of certain women of fashion in skirts or in trousers, who `feel for the people.' In any event, these gentry sin far more than their minds, devoid of all instinct, are capable of realizing. Consequently, and much to their own amazement, the result of their social `efforts' is always nil, frequently, in fact, an indignant rebuff; though this, of course, is passed off as a proof of the people's ingratitude.

And so this man, who was formerly so hard-working, grows lax in his whole view of life and gradually becomes the instrument of those who use him only for their own base advantage. He has so often been unemployed through no fault of his own that one time more or less ceases to matter, even when the aim is no longer to fight for economic rights, but to destroy political, social, or cultural values in general.

Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in preserving what exists, but in breeding offspring to carry on the species, likewise, in human life, it is less important artificially to alleviate existing evil, which, in view of human nature, is ninety-nine per cent impossible, than to ensure from the start healthier channels for a future development.

In these circumstances, people do not live with one another, they press against one another. Every argument, even the most trifling, which in a spacious apartment can be reconciled by a mild segregation, thus solving itself, here leads to loathsome wrangling without end. Among the children, of course, this is still bearable; they always fight under such circumstances, and among themselves they quickly and thoroughly forget about it. But if this battle is carried on between the parents themselves, and almost every day in forms which for vulgarity often leave nothing to be desired, then, if only very gradually, the results of such visual instruction must ultimately become apparent in the children.

Day by day, in the theater and in the movies, in backstairs literature and the yellow press, they see the poison poured into the people by bucketfuls, and then they are amazed at the low `moral content,' the `national indifference,' of the masses of the people.

I believe that those who knew me in those days took me for an eccentric.

In addition, I had the greatest interest in everything connected with politics, but this did not seem to me very significant. On the contrary: in my eyes this was the self-evident duty of every thinking man. Anyone who failed to understand this lost the right to any criticism or complaint.

I came into contact with the products of its education and `philosophy.' And in a few months I obtained what might otherwise have required decades: an understanding of a pestilential whore,' cloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity.

They fear an impotent, spineless genius less than a forceful nature of moderate intelligence. But with the greatest enthusiasm they commend weaklings in both mind and force. They know how to create the illusion that this is the only way of preserving the peace, and at the same time, stealthily but steadily, they conquer one position after another, sometimes by silent blackmail, sometimes by actual theft, at moments when the general attention is directed toward other matters, and either does not want to be disturbed or considers the matter too small to raise a stir about, thus again irritating the vicious antagonist. This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty unless the opposing side learns to combat poison gas with poison gas.

Millions of workers, I am sure, started out as enemies of the Social Democratic Party in their innermost soul, but their resistance was overcome in a way which was sometimes utterly insane; that is, when the bourgeois parties adopted a hostile attitude toward every demand of a social character. Their simple, narrow-minded rejection of all attempts to better working conditions, to introduce safety devices on machines, to prohibit child labor and protect the woman, at. least in the months when she was bearing the future national comrade under her heart, contributed to drive the masses into the net of Social Democracy which gratefully snatched at every case of such a disgraceful attitude. Never can our political bourgeoisie make good its sins in this direction, for by resisting all attempts to do away with social abuses, they sowed hatred and seemed to justify even the assertions of the mortal enemies of the entire nation, to the effect that only the Social Democratic Party represented the interests of the working people`

In a few decades the weapon for defending the social rights of man had, in their experienced hands, become an instrument for the destruction of the national economy.

Less and less attention was paid to defending the real needs of the working class, and finally political expediency made it seem undesirable to relieve the social or cultural miseries of the broad masses at all, for otherwise there was a risk that these masses, satisfied in their desires, could no longer be used forever as docile shock troops.

pettifogging

There were few Jews in Linz. In the course of the centuries their outward appearance had become Europeanized and had taken on a human look; in fact, I even took them for Germans. The absurdity of this idea did not dawn on me because I saw no distinguishing feature but the strange religion.

The cleanliness of this people, moral and otherwise, I must say, is a point in itself. By their very exterior you could tell that these were no lovers of water, and, to your distress, you often knew it with your eyes closed.

It was hard for me to understand how people who, when spoken to alone, possessed some sensible opinions, suddenly lost them as soon as they came under the influence of the masses.

But what inevitably remained incomprehensible was the boundless hatred they heaped upon their own nationality, despising its greatness, besmirching its history, and dragging its great men into the gutter.

The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about.

TODAY it is my conviction that in general, aside from cases of unusual talent, a man should not engage in public political activity before his thirtieth year. He should not do so, because up to this time, as a rule, he is engaged in molding a general platform, on the basis of which he proceeds to examine the various political problems and finally establishes his own position on them.

A homogeneous national state can, by virtue of the natural inertia of its inhabitants, and the resulting power of resistance, sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst administration or leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At such times it often seems as though there were no more life in such a body, as though it were dead and done for, but one fine day the supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of humanity astonishing indications of its unquenchable vital force. It is different, however, with an empire not consisting of similar peoples, which is held together, not by common blood but by a common fist. In this case the weakness of leadership will not cause a hibernation of the state, but an awakening of all the individual instincts which are present in the blood, but cannot develop in times when there is a dominant will.

I had always hated parliament, but not as an institution in itself. On the contrary, as a freedom-loving man I could not even conceive of any other possibility of government, for the idea of any sort of dictatorship would, in view of my attitude toward the House of Habsburg, have seemed to me a crime against freedom and all reason.

Up to the introduction of universal and secret suffrage, the Germans had had a majority, though an insignificant one, in parliament. Even this condition was precarious, for the Social Democrats, with their unreliable attitude in national questions, always turned against German interests in critical matters affecting the Germans - in order not to alienate the members of the various foreign nationalities.

At first I could not help but be amazed at how short a time it took this great evil power within the state to create a certain opinion even where it meant totally falsifying profound desires and views which surely existed among the public.

He will poke into the most secret family affairs and not rest until his truffle-searching instinct digs up some miserable incident which is calculated to finish off the unfortunate victim. But if, after the most careful sniffing, absolutely nothing is found, either in the man's public or private life, one of these scoundrels simply seizes on slander, in the firm conviction that despite a thousand refutations something always sticks and, moreover, through the immediate and hundredfold repetition of his defamations by all his accomplices, any resistance on the part of the victim is in most cases utterly impossible; and it must be borne in mind that this rabble never acts out of motives which might seem credible or even understandable to the rest of humanity. God forbid! While one of these scum is attacking his beloved fellow men in the most contemptible fashion, the octopus covers himself with a veritable cloud of respectability and unctuous phrases, prates about `journalistic duty' and such-like lies, and even goes so far as to shoot off his mouth at committee meetings and congresses - that is, occasions where these pests are present in large numbers - about a very special variety of `honor,' to wit, the journalistic variety, which the assembled rabble gravely and mutually confirm.

The more its activities broke the predominance of the Germans, the more the country succumbed to a system of playing off the nationalities against one another.

Rebels, not against the nation and not against the state as such, but rebels against a kind of government which in their conviction would inevitably lead to the destruction of their own nationality.

If, by the instrument of governmental power, a nationality is led toward its destruction, then rebellion is not only the right of every member of such a people - it is his duty.

Schonerer seemed to me even then the better and more profound thinker in questions of principle. He foresaw the inevitable end of the Austrian state more clearly and correctly than anyone else. If, especially in the Reich, people had paid more attention to his warnings against the Habsburg monarchy, the calamity of Germany's World War against all Europe would never have occurred.

The press either killed them with silence or mutilated their speeches in such a way that any coherence, and often even the sense, was twisted or entirely lost, and public opinion received a very poor picture of the aims of the new movement. What the various gentlemen said was quite unimportant; the important thing was what people read about them.

It must, furthermore, avoid everything which might diminish or even weaken its ability to move the masses, not for `demagogic' reasons, but in the simple knowledge that without the mighty force of the mass of a people, no great id -a, however lofty and noble it may seem, can be realized.