Mein Kampf aka My Struggle

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It was hard, at that time, to make it clear to people that every movement, as long as it has not achieved the victory of its ideas, hence its goal, is a party even if it assumes a thousand different names.

If any man wants to put into practical effect a bold idea whose realization seems useful in the interests of his fellow men, he will first of all have to seek supporters who are ready to fight for his intentions. And if this intention consists only in destroying the existing parties, of ending the fragmentation, the exponents of this view and propagators of this determination are themselves a party, as long as this goal has not been achieved. It is hair-splitting and shadow-boxing when some antiquated folkish theoretician, whose practical successes stand in inverse proportion to his wisdom, imagines that he can change the party character which every young movement possesses by changing this term.

On the contrary.

If anything is unfolkish, it is this tossing around of old Germanic expressions which neither fit into the present period nor represent anything definite, but can easily lead to seeing the significance of a movement in its outward vocabulary. This is a real menace which today can be observed on countless occasions.

Altogether then, and also in the period that followed, I had to warn again and again against those deutschvölkisch wandering scholars whose positive accomplishment is always practically nil, but whose conceit can scarcely be excelled. The young movement had and still has to guard itself against an influx of people whose sole recommendation for the most part lies in their declaration that they have fought for thirty and even forty years for the same idea. Anyone who fights for forty years for a so-called idea without being able to bring about even the slightest success, in fact, without having prevented the victory of the opposite, has, with forty years of activity, provided proof of his own incapacity. The danger above all lies in the fact that such natures do not want to fit into the movement as links, but keep shooting off their mouths about leading circles in which alone, on the strength of their age-old activity, they can see a suitable place for further activity. But woe betide if a young movement is surrended to the mercies of such people. No more than a business man who in forty years of activity has steadily run a big business into the ground is fitted to be the founder of a new one, is a folkish Methuselah, who in exactly the same time has gummed up and petrified a great idea, fit for the leadership of a new, young movement!

Besides, only a fragment of all these people come into the new movement to serve it, but in most cases, under its protection or through the possibilities it offers, to warm over their old cabbage

They do not want to benefit the idea of the new doctrine, they only expect it to give them a chance to make humanity miserable with their own ideas. For what kind of ideas they often are, it is hard to tell.

The characteristic thing about these people is that they rave about old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their bearded heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack. Posterity will have little occasion to glorify their own heroic existence in a new epic.

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I came to know these people too well not to feel the profoundest disgust at their miserable play-acting. But they make a ridiculous impression on the broad masses, and the Jew has every reason to spare these folkish comedians, even to prefer them to the true fighters for a coming German state. With all this, these people are boundlessly conceited; despite all the proofs of their complete incompetence, they claim to know everything better and become a real plague for all straightforward and honest fighters to whom heroism seems worth honoring, not only in the past, but who also endeavor to give posterity a similar picture by their own actions.

And often it can be distinguished only with difficulty which of these people act out of inner stupidity or incompetence and which only pretend to for certain reasons. Especially with the so-called religious reformers on an old Germanic basis, I always have the feeling that they were sent by those powers which do not want the resurrection of our people. For their whole activity leads the people away from the common struggle against the common enemy, the Jew, and instead lets them waste their strength on inner religious squabbles as senseless as they are disastrous. For these very reasons the establishment of a strong central power implying the unconditional authority of a leadership is necessary in the movement. By it alone can such ruinous elements be squelched. And for this reason the greatest enemies of a uniform, strictly led and conducted movement are to be found in the circles of these folkish wandering Jews. In the movement they hate the power that checks their mischief.

Not for nothing did the young movement establish a definite program in which it did not use the word 'folkish.' The concept folkish, in view of its conceptual boundlessness, is no possible basis for a movement and offers no standard for membership in one. The more indefinable this concept is in practice, the more and broader interpretations it permits, the greater becomes the possibility of invoking its authority. The insertion of such an indefinable and variously interpretable concept into the political struggle leads to the destruction of any strict fighting solidarity, since the latter does not permit leaving to the individual the definition of his faith and will.

And it is disgraceful to see all the people who run around today with the word 'folkish' on their caps and how many have their own interpretation of this concept. A Bavarian professor by the name of Bayer, a famous fighter with spiritual weapons, rich in equally spiritual marches on Berlin, thinks that the concept folkish consists only in a monarchistic attitude. This learned mind, however, has thus far forgotten to give a closer explanation of the identity of our German monarchs of the past with the folkish opinion of today. And I fear that in this the gentleman would not easily succeed. For anything less folkish than most of the Germanic monarchic state formations can hardly be imagined. If this were not so, they would never have disappeared, or their disappearance would offer proof of the unsoundness of the folkish outlook.

And so everyone shoots off his mouth about this concept as he happens to understand it. As a basis for a movement of political struggle, such a multiplicity of opinions is out of the question.

I shall not even speak of the unworldliness of these folkish Saint Johns of the twentieth century or their ignorance of the popular soul. It is sufficiently illustrated by the ridicule with which they are treated by the Left, which lets them talk and laughs at them.

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Anyone in this world who does not succeed in being hated by his adversaries does not seem to me to be worth much as a friend. And thus the friendship of these people for our young movement was not only worthless, but solely and always harmful, and it was also the main reason why, first of all, we chose the name of 'party' - we had grounds for hoping that by this alone a whole swarm of these folkish sleepwalkers would be frightened away from us - and why in the second place we termed ourselves National Socialist German Workers' Party.

The first expression kept away the antiquity enthusiasts, the big-mouths and superficial proverb-makers of the so-called folkish idea,' and the second freed us from the entire host of knights of the 'spiritual sword,' all the poor wretches who wield the 'spiritual weapon' as a protecting shield to hide their actual cowardice.

It goes without saying that in the following period we were attacked hardest especially by these last, not actively, of course, but only with the pen, just as you would expect from such folkish goose-quills. For them our principle, 'Against those who attack us with force we will defend ourselves with force,' had something terrifying about it. They persistently reproached us, not only with brutal worship of the blackjack, but with lack of spirit as such. The fact that in a public meeting a Demosthenes can be brought to silence if only fifty idiots, supported by their voices and their fists, refuse to let him speak, makes no impression whatever on such a quack. His inborn cowardice never lets him get into such danger. For he does not work 'noisily' and 'obtrusively,' but in 'silence.'

Even today r cannot warn our young movement enough against falling into the net of these so-called 'silent workers.' They are not only cowards, but they are also always incompetents and do-nothings. A man who knows a thing, who is aware of a given danger, and sees the possibility of a remedy with his own eyes, has the duty and obligation, by God, not to work 'silently,' but to stand up before the whole public against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so, he is a disloyal, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and inability. To be sure, this does not apply at all to most of these people, for they know absolutely nothing, but behave as though they knew God knows what; they can do nothing but try to swindle the whole world with their tricks; they are lazy, but with the 'silent' work they claim to do, they arouse the impression of an enormous and conscientious activity; in short, they are swindlers, political crooks who hate the honest work of others. As soon as one of these folkish moths praises the darkness of silence, we can bet a thousand to one that by it he produces nothing, but steals, steals from the fruits of other people's work.

To top all this, there is the arrogance and conceited effrontery with which this lazy, light-shunning rabble fall upon the work of others, trying to criticize it from above, thus in reality aiding the mortal enemies of our nationality.

Every last agitator who possesses the courage to stand on a tavern table among his adversaries, to defend his opinions with manly forthrightness, does more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks. He will surely be able to convert one man or another and win him for the movement. It will be possible to examine his achievement and establish the effect of his activity by its results. Only the cowardly swindlers who praise their 'silent' work and thus wrap themselves in the protective cloak of a despicable anonymity, are good for nothing and may in the truest sense of the word be considered drones in the resurrection of our people.

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At the beginning of 1920, I urged the holding of the first great mass meeting. Differences of opinion arose. A few leading party members regarded the affair as premature and hence disastrous in effect. The Red press had begun to concern itself with us and we were fortunate enough gradually to achieve its hatred. We had begun to speak in the discussions at other meetings. Of course, each of us was at once shouted down. There was, however, some success. People got to know us and proportionately as their knowledge of us deepened, the aversion and rage against us grew. And thus we were entitled to hope that in our first great mass meeting we would be visited by a good many of our friends from the Red camp.

I, too, realized that there was great probability of the meeting being broken up. But the struggle had to be carried through, if not now, a few months later. It was entirely in our power to make the movement eternal on the very first day by blindly and ruthlessly fighting for it. I knew above all the mentality of the adherents of the Red side far too well, not to know that resistance to the utmost not only makes the biggest impression, but also wins supporters. And so we just had to be resolved to put up this resistance.

Herr Harrer, then first chairman of the party, felt he could not support my views with regard to the time chosen and consequently, being an honest, upright man, he withdrew from the leadership of the party. His place was taken by Herr Anton Drexler. I had reserved for myself the organization of propaganda and began ruthlessly to carry it out.

And so, the date of February 4, 1920, was set for the holding of this first great mass meeting of the still unknown movement.

I personally conducted the preparations. They were very brief. Altogether the whole apparatus was adjusted to make lightning decisions. Its aim was to enable us to take a position on current questions in the form of mass meetings within twenty-four hours. They were to be announced by posters and leaflets whose content was determined according to those guiding principles which in rough outlines I have set down in my treatise on propaganda. Effect on the broad masses, concentration on a few points, constant repetition of the same, self-assured and self-reliant framing of the text in the forms of an apodictic statement, greatest perseverance in distribution and patience in awaiting the effect.

On principle, the color red was chosen; it is the most exciting; we knew it would infuriate and provoke our adversaries the most and thus bring us to their attention and memory whether they liked it or not.

In the following period the inner fraternization in Bavaria between the Marxists and the Center as a political party was most clearly shown in the concern with which the ruling Bavarian People's Party tried to weaken the effect of our posters on the Red working masses and later to prohibit them. If the police found no other way to proceed against them, 'considerations of traffic' had to do the trick, till finally, to please the inner, silent Red ally, these posters, which had given back hundreds of thousands of workers, incited and seduced by internationalism, to their German nationality, were forbidden entirely with the helping hand of a so-called German National People's Party. As an appendix and example to our young movement, I am adding a number of these proclamations. They come from a period embracing nearly three years; they can best illustrate the mighty struggle which the young movement fought at this time. They will also bear witness to posterity of the will and honesty of our convictions and the despotism of the so-called national authorities in prohibiting, just because they personally found it uncomfortable, a nationalization which would have won back broad masses of our nationality.

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They will also help to destroy the opinion that there had been a national government as such in Bavaria and also document for posterity the fact that the national Bavaria of 1919, 1920, 1921 1922, 1923 was not forsooth the result of a national government, but that the government was merely forced to take consideration of a people that was gradually feeling national.

The governments themselves did everything to eliminate this process of recovery and to make it impossible.

Here only two men must be excluded:

Ernst Pöhner, the police president at that time, and Chief Deputy Frick, his faithful advisor, were the only higher state officials who even then had the courage to be first Germans and then officials. Ernst Pöhner was the only man in a responsible post who did not curry favor with the masses, but felt responsible to his nationality and was ready to risk and sacrifice everything, even if necessary his personal existence, for the resurrection of the German people whom he loved above all things. And for this reason he was always a troublesome thorn in the eyes of those venal officials the law of whose actions was prescribed, not by the interest of their people and the necessary uprising for its freedom, but by the boss's orders, without regard for the welfare of the national trust confided in them.

And above all he was one of those natures who, contrasting with most of the guardians of our so-called state authority, do not fear the enmity of traitors to the people and the nation, but long for it as for a treasure which a decent man must take for granted. The hatred of Jews and Marxists, their whole campaign of lies and slander, were for him the sole happiness amid the misery of our people.

A man of granite honesty, of antique simplicity and German straightforwardness, for whom the words 'Sooner dead than a slave' were no phrase but the essence of his whole being.

He and his collaborator, Dr. Frick, are in my eyes the only men in a state position who possess the right to be called co-creators of a national Bavaria.

Before we proceeded to hold our first mass meeting, not only did the necessary propaganda material have to be made ready, but the main points of the program also had to be put into print.

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In the second volume I shall thoroughly develop the guiding principles which we had in mind, particularly in framing the program. Here I shall only state that it was done, not only to give the young movement form and content, but to make its aims understandable to the broad masses.

Circles of the so-called intelligentsia have mocked and ridiculed this and attempted to criticize it. But the soundness of our point of view at that time has been shown by the effectiveness of this program.

In these years I have seen dozens of new movements arise and they have all vanished and evaporated without trace. A single one remains: The National Socialist German Workers' Party. And today more than ever I harbor the conviction that people can combat it, that they can attempt to paralyze it, that petty party ministers can forbid us to speak and write, but that they will never prevent the victory of our ideas.

When not even memory will reveal the names of the entire present-day state conception and its advocates, the fundamentals of the National Socialist program will be the foundations of a coming state.

Our four months' activities at meetings up to January, 1920, had slowly enabled us to save up the small means that we needed for printing our first leaflet, our first poster, and our program.

If I take the movement's first large mass meeting as the conclusion of this volume, it is because by it the party burst the narrow bonds of a small club and for the first time exerted a determining influence on the mightiest factor of our time, public opinion.

I myself at that time had but one concern: Will the hall be filled, or will we speak to a yawning hall? I had the unshakable l inner conviction that if the people came, the day was sure to be a great success for the young movement. And so I anxiously looked forward to that evening.

The meeting was to be opened at 7:30. At 7:15 I entered the Festsaal of the Hofbräuhaus on the Platzl in Munich, and my heart nearly burst for joy. The gigantic hall - for at that time it still seemed to me gigantic - was overcrowded with people, shoulder to shoulder, a mass numbering almost two thousand people. And above all - those people to whom we wanted to appeal had come. Far more than half the hall seemed to be occupied by Communists and Independents. They had resolved that our first demonstration would come to a speedy end.

But it turned out differently. After the first speaker had finished, I took the floor. A few minutes later there was a hail of shouts, there were violent dashes in the hall, a handful of the most faithful war comrades and other supporters battled with the disturbers, and only little by little were able to restore order.

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I was able to go on speaking. After half an hour the applause slowly began to drown out the screaming and shouting.

I now took up the program and began to explain it for the first time.

From minute to minute the interruptions were increasingly drowned out by shouts of applause. And when I finally submitted the twenty-five theses, point for point, to the masses and asked them personally to pronounce judgment on them, one after another was accepted with steadily mounting joy, unanimously and again unanimously, and when the last thesis had found its way to the heart of the masses, there stood before me a hall full of people united by a new conviction, a new faith, a new will.

When after nearly four hours the hall began to empty and the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, began to move, shove, press toward the exit like a slow stream, I knew that now the principles of a movement which could no longer be forgotten were moving out among the German people.

A fire was kindled from whose flame one day the sword must come which would regain freedom for the Germanic Siegfried and life for the German nation.

And side by side with the coming resurrection, I sensed that the goddess of inexorable vengeance for the perjured deed of November 9, 1919, was striding forth.

Thus slowly the hall emptied.

The movement took its course.

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End of
Volume 1: A Reckoning
CHAPTER 12: THE FIRST PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS' PARTY

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This spells the end of the first volume of Mein Kampf aka My Struggle…

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This spells the beginning of the second volume of Mein Kampf aka My Struggle…

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 1: PHILOSOPHY AND PARTY

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ON FEBRUARY 24, 1920, the first great public demonstration of our young movement took place. In the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbräuhaus the twenty-five theses of the new party's program were submitted to a crowd of almost two thousand and every single point was accepted amid jubilant approval.

With this the first guiding principles and directives were issued for a struggle which was to do away with a veritable mass of old traditional conceptions and opinions and with unclear, yes, harmful, aims. Into the rotten and cowardly bourgeois world and into the triumphant march of the Marxist wave of conquest a new power phenomenon was entering, which at the eleventh hour would halt the chariot of doom.

It was self-evident that the new movement could hope to achieve the necessary importance and the required strength for this gigantic struggle only if it succeeded from the very first day in arousing in the hearts of its supporters the holy conviction that with it political life was to be given, not to a new election slogan, but to a new philosophy of fundamental significance.

We must bear in mind from what wretched viewpoints so-called 'party programs' are normally patched together and from time to time refurbished or remodeled. We must submit the driving motives particularly of these bourgeois 'program-commissions' to our magnifying glass, in order to achieve the necessary understanding for the evaluation of these programmatical monstrosities.

It is always one sole concern which impels men to set up new programs or to change existing ones: concern for the next election. As soon as it dawns on these parliamentary 'jugglers' that the beloved people are again revolting and would like to slip out of the harness of the old party cart, they begin to repaint the shafts. Then come the stargazers and party astrologers, the so-called 'experienced," shrewd' men, old parliamentarians as a rule, who in their 'rich period of apprenticeship' can recall analogous cases when the patience of the masses had burst, and who now sense that something similar is again menacingly close. And so they take up the old prescriptions, form a 'commission,' go about listening to the voice of the beloved people, sniff at the products of the press, and thus slowly scent what the dear broad masses would like to have, what they detest and what they hope for. Every professional group, even every class of employees, is studied with the greatest precision and their most secret wishes investigated. Even the 'bad slogans' of the dangerous opposition then suddenly become ripe for examination, and, not seldom to the greatest amazement of their original inventors and disseminators, turn up, quite innocently and naturally, in the old parties' treasury of knowledge.

And so the commissions come together and 'revise' the old program and frame a new one (and in so doing the gentlemen change their convictions as a soldier in the field changes his shirt, which is when the old one is full of lice!), in which everybody gets his share. The peasant gets protection for his agriculture, the industrialist protection for his product, the consumer protection for his purchase, the teachers' salaries are raised, the civil servants' pensions are improved, widows and orphans are to be taken care of most liberally by the state, trade is promoted, tariffs are to be reduced, and taxes are pretty much, if not altogether, done away with. Occasionally it transpires that some group has been forgotten after all, or that some demand circulating among the people has not been heard of. Then anything there is room for is patched in with the greatest haste, until the framers can hope with a clear conscience that the army of run-of-the-mill petty bourgeois with their women have been pacified and are simply delighted. Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it.

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Then, when election day is past and the parliamentarians have held their last mass meeting in five years, to turn from the training of the plebs to their higher and more agreeable tasks, the program commission again dissolves and the fight for the remodeling of things again takes the form of a struggle for daily bread: which in parliament is known as attendance fees.

Every morning Mr. People's deputy betakes himself to the exalted House, and even if he doesn't go in all the way, he at least goes as far as the anteroom where the attendance lists are kept. Aggressively serving the people, he there enters his name and as well-deserved reward accepts a small remuneration for these continuous and exhausting exertions.

After four years, or otherwise during critical weeks when the dissolution of the parliamentary bodies begins to loom closer and closer, an unconquerable urge suddenly comes over the gentlemen. Just as a caterpillar cannot help turning into a butterfly, these parliamentary larvae leave their parliamentary cocoons and, endowed with wings, fly out among the beloved people. Again they talk to their voters, speak of the enormous work they have done and the malignant stubbornness of their opponents, but the incomprehensible masses, instead of gratefully applauding, sometimes hurl vulgar, even bitter, epithets at their heads. If this ingratitude on the part of the people rises to a certain degree, only a single means can help: the party's sheen must be brushed off, the program needs improvement, the commission comes back to life, and the swindle begins again from the beginning. In view of the granite stupidity of our humanity, we have no need to be surprised at the outcome. Led by their press and dazzled by a new and alluring program, the 'bourgeois' as well as the 'proletarian' voting cattle return to the common stable and again vote for their old misleaders.

Thus, the man of the people and the candidate of the working classes turns himself back into the parliamentary caterpillar and again fattens on the foliage of state life, and again after four years turns back into a gleaming butterfly.

There is scarcely anything more depressing than to observe this whole process in the light of sober reality, to be obliged to witness this constantly repeated deception.

From such spiritual soil the bourgeois camp, you may be assured, cannot draw the strength to carry on the struggle with the organized power of Marxism.

And of this the gentlemen never think seriously. In view of all the admitted narrow-mindedness and mental inferiority of these parliamentary medicine-men of the white race, they themselves cannot seriously imagine that by way of Western democracy they can fight against a doctrine for which democracy, along with everything connected with it, is at best a means used to paralyze the adversary and to create a free path for its own activity. Though at present a part of the Marxists shrewdly try to pretend that they are inseparably linked with the principles of democracy, do not forget if you please that in the critical hour these gentlemen didn't care a damn about a majority decision in the Western-democratic sense! This was in the days when the bourgeois parliamentarians saw the security of the Reich guaranteed by the monumental small-mindedness of a superior number, while the Marxists, with a band of bums, deserters, party bosses, and Jewish journalists, abruptly seized power, thus giving democracy a resounding slap in the face. So it really takes the credulous mind of one of these parliamentary medicine-men of bourgeois democracy to imagine that now or in the future the brutal determination of those interested in and supporting that world plague could be exorcised merely by the magic formulas of a Western parliamentarianism.

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The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extermination. If today they came to the conviction that from the witches' cauldron of our parliamentary democracy a majority could be brewed, which - and even if only on the basis of its legislating majority - would seriously attack Marxism, the parliamentary jugglery would come to an end at once. The banner-bearers of the Red International would then, instead of addressing an appeal to the democratic conscience, emit a fiery call to the proletarian masses, and their struggle at one stroke would be removed from the stuffy air of our parliamentary meeting halls to the factories and the streets. Democracy would be done for immediately; what the mental dexterity of those people's apostles in the parliaments had failed to do, the crowbar and sledgehammer of incited proletarian masses would instantly succeed in doing, as in the fall of 1918: they would drive it home to the bourgeois world how insane it is to imagine that they can oppose Jewish world domination with the methods of Western democracy.

As I have said, it requires a credulous mind to bind oneself, in facing such a player, by rules which for him are only good for bluff or his own profit, and are thrown overboard as soon as they cease to be to his advantage.

Since with all parties of a so-called bourgeois orientation in reality the whole political struggle actually consists in nothing but a mad rush for seats in parliament, in which convictions and principles are thrown overboard like sand ballast whenever it seems expedient, their programs are naturally tuned accordingly and - inversely, to be sure - their forces also measured by the same standard. They lack that great magnetic attraction which alone the masses always follow under the compelling impact of towering great ideas, the persuasive force of absolute belief in them, coupled with a fanatical courage to fight for them.

At a time when one side, armed with all the weapons of a philosophy, a thousand times criminal though it may be, sets out to storm an existing order, the other side, now and forever can offer resistance only if it clads itself in the forms of a new faith, in our case a political one, and for a weak-kneed, cowardly defensive substitutes the battle-cry of courageous and brutal attack. And so, if today our movement gets the witty reproach that it is working toward a 'revolution,' especially from the so-called national bourgeois ministers, say of the Bavarian Center' the only answer we can give one of political twerps is this: Yes, indeed' we are trying to make up for what you in your criminal stupidity failed to do. By the principles of your parliamentary cattle-trading, you helped to drag the nation into the abyss; but we, in the form of attack and by setting up a new philosophy of life and by fanatically and indomitably defending its principles, shall build for our people the steps on which it will some day climb back into the temple of freedom.

And so, in the founding period of our movement, our first concern had always to be directed toward preventing the host of warriors for an exalted conviction from becoming a mere club for the advancement of parliamentary interests.

The first precautionary measure was the creation of a program which aimed at a development which by its very inner greatness seemed apt to scare away the small and feeble spirits of our present party politicians.

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How correct was our conception of the necessity of programmatic aims of the sharpest stamp could be seen most clearly from those catastrophic weaknesses which finally led to the collapse of Germany.

From the realization of these weaknesses a new state conception, which in itself in turn is an essential ingredient of a new world conception, would inevitably take form.

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In the first volume I have dealt with the word 'folkish,' in so far as I was forced to establish that this term seems inadequately defined to permit the formation of a solid fighting community. All sorts of people, with a yawning gulf between everything essential in their opinions, are running around today under the blanket term 'folkish.' Therefore, before I proceed to the tasks and aims of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, I should like to give a clarification of the concept 'folkish,' as well as its relation to the party movement.

The concept 'folkish' seems as vaguely defined, open to as many interpretations and as unlimited in practical application as, for instance, the word 'religious,' and it is very hard to conceive of anything absolutely precise under this designation, either in the sense of intellectual comprehension or of practical effects. The designation 'religious' only becomes tangibly conceivable in the moment when it becomes connected with a definitely outlined form of its practice. It is a very lovely statement and usually apt, to describe a man's nature as 'profoundly religious.' Perhaps there are a few people who feel satisfied by such a very general description, to whom it can even convey a definite, more or less sharp, picture of that soul-state. But, since the great masses consist neither of philosophers nor of saints, such a very general religious idea will as a rule mean to the individual only the liberation of his individual thought and action, without, how ever, leading to that efficacy which arises from religious inner longing in the moment when, from the purely metaphysical infinite world of ideas, a clearly delimited faith forms. Assuredly, this is not the end in itself, but only a means to the end; yet it is the indispensably necessary means which alone makes possible the achievement of the end. This end, however, is not only ideal, but in the last analysis also eminently practical. And in general we must clearly acknowledge the fact that the highest ideals always correspond to a deep vital necessity, just as the nobility of the most exalted beauty lies in the last analysis only in what is logically most expedient.

By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles - or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles - by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence. We may therefore state that not only does man live in order to serve higher ideals, but that, conversely, these higher ideals also provide the premise for his existence. Thus the circle closes.

Of course, even the general designation 'religious' includes various basic ideas or convictions, for example, the indestructibility of the soul, the eternity of its existence, the existence of a higher being, etc. But all these ideas, regardless how convincing they may be for the individual, are submitted to the critical examination of this individual and hence to a fluctuating affirmation or negation until emotional divination or knowledge assumes the binding force of apodictic faith. This, above all, is the fighting factor which makes a breach and opens the way for the recognition of basic religious views.

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Without clearly delimited faith, religiosity with its unclarity and multiplicity of form would not only be worthless for human life, but would probably contribute to general disintegration.

The situation with the term 'folkish' is similar to that with the term 'religious.' In it, too, there lie various basic realizations. Though of eminent importance, they are, however, so unclearly defined in form that they rise above the value of a more or less acceptable opinion only if they are fitted into the framework of a political party as basic elements. For the realization of philosophical ideals and of the demands derived from them no more occurs through men's pure feeling or inner will in themselves than the achievement of freedom through the general longing for it. No, only when the ideal urge for independence gets a fighting organization in the form of military instruments of power can the pressing desire of a people be transformed into glorious reality.

Every philosophy of life, even if it is a thousand times correct and of highest benefit to humanity, will remain without significance for the practical shaping of a people's life, as long as its principles have not become the banner of a fighting movement which for its part in turn will be a party as long as its activity has not found completion in the victory of its ideas and its party dogmas have not become the new state principles of a people's community.

But if a spiritual conception of a general nature is to serve as a foundation for a future development, the first presupposition is to obtain unconditional clarity with regard to the nature, essence, and scope of this conception, since only on such a basis can a movement be formed which by the inner homogeneity of its convictions can develop the necessary force for struggle. From general ideas a political program must be stamped, from a general philosophy of life a definite political faith. The latter, since its goal must be practically attainable, will not only have to serve the idea in itself, but will also have to take into consideration the means of struggle which are available and must be used for the achievement of this idea. The abstractly correct spiritual conception, which the theoretician has to proclaim, must be coupled with the practical knowledge of the politician. And so an eternal ideal, serving as the guiding star of mankind, must unfortunately resign itself to taking the weaknesses of this mankind into consideration, if it wants to avoid shipwreck at the very outset on the shoals of general human inadequacy. To draw from the realm of the eternally true and ideal that which is humanly possible for small mortals, and make it take form, the search after truth be coupled with knowledge of the people's psyche.

This transformation of a general, philosophical, ideal conception of the highest truth into a definitely delimited, tightly organized political community of faith and struggle, unified in spirit and will, is the most significant achievement, since on its happy solution alone the possibility of the victory of an idea depends. From the army of often millions of men, who as individuals more or less clearly and definitely sense these truths, and in part perhaps comprehend them, one man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite principles from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a free thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith and will.

The general right for such an activity is based on necessity, the personal right on success.

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If from the word 'folkish' we try to peel out the innermost kernel of meaning, we arrive at the following:

Our present political world view, current in Germany, is based in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must indeed be attributed to the state, but that it has nothing to do with racial considerations, but is rather a product of economic necessities, or, at best, the natural result of a political urge for power. This underlying view, if logically developed, leads not only to a mistaken conception of basic racial forces, but also to an underestimation of the individual. For a denial of the difference between the various races with regard to their general culture-creating forces must necessarily extend this greatest of all errors to the judgment of the individual. The assumption of the equality of the races then becomes a basis for a similar way of viewing peoples and finally individual men. And hence international Marxism itself is only the transference, by the Jew, Karl Marx, of a philosophical attitude and conception, which had actually long been in existence, into the form of a definite political creed. Without the subsoil of such generally existing poisoning, the amazing success of this doctrine would never have been possible. Actually Karl Marx was only the one among millions who, with the sure eye of the prophet, recognized in the morass of a slowly decomposing world the most essential poisons, extracted them, and, like a wizard, prepared them into a concentrated solution for the swifter annihilation of the independent existence of free nations on this earth. And all this in the service of his race.

His Marxist doctrine is a brief spiritual extract of the philosophy of life that is generally current today. And for this reason alone any struggle of our so-called bourgeois world against it is impossible, absurd in fact, since this bourgeois world is also essentially infected by these poisons, and worships a view of life which in general is distinguished from the Marxists only by degrees and personalities. The bourgeois world is Marxist, but believes in the possibility of the rule of certain groups of men (bourgeoisie), while Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews.

In opposition to this, the folkish philosophy finds the importance of mankind in its basic racial elements. In the state it sees on principle only a means to an end and construes its end as the preservation of the racial existence of man. Thus, it by no means believes in an equality of the races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated, through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe. Thus, in principle, it serves the basic aristocratic idea of Nature and believes in the validity of this law down to the last individual. It sees not only the different value of the races, but also the different value of individuals. From the mass it extracts the importance of the individual personality, and thus, in contrast to disorganizing Marxism, it has an organizing effect. It believes in the necessity of an idealization of humanity, in which alone it sees the premise for the existence of humanity. But it cannot grant the right to existence even to an ethical idea if this idea represents a danger for the racial life of the bearers of a higher ethics; for in a bastardized and niggerized world all the concepts of the humanly beautiful and sublime, as well as all ideas of an idealized future of our humanity, would be lost forever.

Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again descend on this globe.

The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise.

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And so the folkish philosophy of life corresponds to the innermost will of Nature, since it restores that free play of forces which must lead to a continuous mutual higher breeding, until at last the best of humanity, having achieved possession of this earth, will have a free path for activity in domains which will lie partly above it and partly outside it.

We all sense that in the distant future humanity must be faced by problems which only a highest race, become master people and supported by the means and possibilities of an entire globe, will be equipped to overcome.

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It is self-evident that so general a statement of the meaningful content of a folkish philosophy can be interpreted in thousands of ways. And actually we find hardly a one of our newer political formations which does not base itself in one way or another on this world view. And, by its very existence in the face of the many others, it shows the difference of its conceptions. And so the Marxist world view, led by a unified top organization, is opposed by a hodge-podge of views which even as ideas are not very impressive in face of the solid, hostile front. Victories are not gained by such feeble weapons! Not until the international world view - politically led by organized Marxism - is confronted by a folkish world view, organized and led with equal unity, will success, supposing the fighting energy to be equal on both sides, fall to the side of eternal truth.

A philosophy can only be organizationally comprehended on the basis of a definite formulation of that philosophy, and what dogmas represent for religious faith, party principles are for a political party in the making.

Hence an instrument must be created for the folkish world view which enables it to fight, just as the Marxist party organization creates a free path for internationalism.

This is the goal pursued by the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

That such a party formulation of the folkish concept is the precondition for the victory of the folkish philosophy of life is proved most sharply by a fact which is admitted indirectly at least by the enemies of such a party tie. Those very people who never weary of emphasizing that the folkish philosophy is not the 'hereditary estate' of an individual, but that it slumbers or 'lives' in the hearts of God knows how many millions, thus demonstrate the fact that the general existence of such ideas was absolutely unable to prevent the victory of the hostile world view, classically represented by a political party. If this were not so, the German people by this time would have been bound to achieve a gigantic victory and not be standing at the edge of an abyss. What gave the international world view success was its representation by a political party organized into storm troops; what caused the defeat of the opposite world view was its lack up to now of a unified body to represent it. Not by unlimited freedom to interpret a general view, but only in the limited and hence integrating form of a political organization can a world view fight and conquer.

Therefore, I saw my own task especially in extracting those nuclear ideas from the extensive and unshaped substance of a general world view and remolding them into more or less dogmatic forms which in their clear delimitation are adapted for holding solidly together those men who swear allegiance to them. In other words: From the basic ideas of a general folkish world conception the National Socialist German Workers' Party takes over the essential fundamental traits, and from them, with due consideration of practical reality, the times, and the available human material as well as its weaknesses, forms a political creed which, in turn, by the strict organizational integration of large human masses thus made possible, creates the precondition for the victorious struggle of this world view.

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End of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 1: PHILOSOPHY AND PARTY

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 2: THE STATE

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