Mein Kampf aka My Struggle

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This gives the following picture:

The folkish state, from the township up to the Reich leadership? has no representative body which decides anything by the majority, but only advisory bodies which stand at the side of the elected leader, receiving their share of work from him, and in turn if necessary assuming unlimited responsibility in certain fields, just as on a larger scale the leader or chairman of the various corporations himself possesses.

As a matter of principle, the folkish state does not tolerate asking advice or opinions in special matters - say, of an economic nature - men who, on the basis of their education and activity, can understand nothing of the subject. It, therefore, divides its representative bodies from the start into political and professional chambers.

In order to guarantee a profitable cooperation between the two a special senate of the ¨¦lite always stands over them.

In no chamber and in no senate does a vote ever take place. They are working institutions and not voting machines. The individual member has an advisory, but never a determining voice. The latter is the exclusive privilege of the responsible chairman.

This principle - absolute responsibility unconditionally combined with absolute will gradually breed an ¨¦lite of leaders such as today, in this era of irresponsible parliamentarianism, is utterly inconceivable.

Thus, the political form of the nation will be brought into agreement with that law to which it owes its greatness in the cultural and economic field.

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As regards the possibility of putting these ideas into practice, I beg you not to forget that the parliamentary principle of democratic majority rule has by no means always dominated mankind, but on the contrary is to be found only in brief periods of history, which are always epochs of the decay of peoples and states.

But it should not be believed that such a transformation can, be accomplished by purely theoretical measures from above, since logically it may not even stop at the state constitution, but must. permeate all other legislation, and indeed all civil life. Such a. fundamental change can and will only take place through a movement which is itself constructed in the spirit of these ideas and hence bears the future state within itself.

Hence the National Socialist movement should today adapt. itself entirely to these ideas and carry them to practical fruition within its own organization, so that some day it may not only show the state these same guiding principles, but can also place the completed body of its own state at its disposal.

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End of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 4: PERSONALITY AND THE CONCEPTION OF THE FOLKISH STATE

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 5: PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION

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THE folkish state, a general picture of which I have attempted to draw in broad outlines, will not be realized by the mere knowledge of what is necessary to this state. It is not enough to know how a folkish state should look. Far more important is the program for its creation. We may not expect the present parties, which after all are primarily beneficiaries of the present state, to arrive of their own accord at a change of orientation and of their own free will to modify their present attitude. What makes this all the more impossible is that their real leading elements are always Jews and only Jews. And the development we are going through today, if continued unobstructed, would fulfill the Jewish prophecy - the Jew would really devour the peoples of the earth, would become their master.

Thus, confronting the millions of German 'bourgeois' and 'proletarians,' who for the most part, from cowardice coupled with stupidity, trot toward their ruin, he pursues his way inexorably, in the highest consciousness of his future goal. A party which is led by him can, therefore, stand for no other interests beside his interests; and with the concerns of Aryan nations, these have nothing in common.

And so, if we wish to transform the ideal image of a folkish state into practical reality, we must, independent of the powers that have thus far ruled public life, seek a new force that is willing and able to take up the struggle for such an idea. For it will take a struggle, in view of the fact that the first task is not creation of a folkish state conception, but above all elimination of the existing Jewish one. As so frequently in history, the main difficulty lies, not in the form of the new state of things, but in making place for it. Prejudices and interests unite in a solid phalanx and attempt with all possible means to prevent the victory of an idea that is displeasing to them or that menaces them.

And so, unfortunately, the fighter for such a new idea, important as it may be to put positive emphasis on it, is forced to carry through first of all the negative part of the fight, that part which should lead to the elimination of the present state of affairs.

A young doctrine of great and new fundamental significance will, displeasing as this may be to the individual, be forced to employ as its first weapon the probe of criticism in all its sharpness.

It indicates a lack of deep insight into historical developments when today people who call themselves folkish make a great point of assuring us over and over that they do not plan to engage in negative criticism, but only in constructive work; this absurd childish stammering is 'folkish' in the worst sense and shows how little trace the history even of their own times has left in these minds. Marxism also had a goal, and it, too, has a constructive activity (even if it is only to erect a despotism of international world Jewish finance); but previously, nevertheless, it practiced criticism for seventy years, annihilating, disintegrating criticism, and again criticism, which continued until the old state was undermined by this persistent corrosive acid and brought to collapse. Only then did its actual 'construction' begin. And that was self-evident, correct and logical. An existing condition is not eliminated just by emphasizing and arguing for a future one. For it is not to be presumed that the adherents, let alone the beneficiaries of the condition now existing, could all be converted and won over to the new one merely by demonstrating its necessity. On the contrary, it is only too possible that in this case two conditions will remain in existence side by side, and that the so-called philosophy will become a party, unable to raise itself above its limitations. For the philosophy is intolerant; it cannot content itself with the role of one 'party beside others,' but imperiously demands, not only its own exclusive and unlimited recognition, but the complete transformation of all public life in accordance with its views. It can, therefore, not tolerate the simultaneous continuance of a body representing the former condition.

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This is equally true of religions.

Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.

The objection may very well be raised that such phenomena in world history arise for the most part from specifically Jewish modes of thought, in fact, that this type of intolerance and fanaticism positively embodies the Jewish nature. This may be a thousand times true; we may deeply regret this fact and establish with justifiable loathing that its appearance in the history of mankind is something that was previously alien to history - yet this does not alter the fact that this condition is with us today. The men who want to redeem our German people from its present condition have no need to worry their heads thinking how lovely it would be if this and that did not exist : they must try to ascertain how the given condition can be eliminated. A philosophy filled with infernal intolerance will only be broken by a new idea, driven forward by the same spirit, championed by the same mighty will, and at the same time pure and absolutely genuine in itself.

The individual may establish with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror entered into the far freer ancient world, but he will not be able to contest the {act that since then the world has been afflicted and dominated by this coercion, and that coercion is broken only by coercion, and terror only by terror. Only then can a new state of affairs be constructively created.

Political parties are inclined to compromises; philosophies never. Political parties even reckon with opponents; philosophies proclaim their infallibility.

Political parties, too, almost always have the original purpose of attaining exclusive despotic domination; a slight impulse toward a philosophy is almost always inherent in them. Yet the very narrowness of their program robs them of the heroism which a philosophy demands. The conciliatory nature of their will attracts small and weakly spirits with which no crusades can be fought. And so, for the most part, they soon bog down in their own pitiful pettiness: They abandon the struggle for a philosophy and attempt instead, by so-called 'positive collaboration,' to conquer as quickly as possible a little place at the feeding trough of existing institutions and to keep it as long as possible. That is their entire endeavor. And if they should be pushed away from the general feeding crib by a somewhat brutal competing boarder, their thoughts and actions are directed solely, whether by force or trickery, toward pushing their way back to the front of the hungry herd and finally, even at the cost of their holy conviction, toward refreshing themselves at the beloved swill pail. Jackals of politics!

Since a philosophy of life is never willing to share with another, it cannot be willing either to collaborate in an existing r¨¦gime which it condemns, but feels obligated to combat this r¨¦gime and the whole hostile world of ideas with all possible means; that is, to prepare its downfall.

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This purely destructive fight - the danger of which is at once recognized by all others and which consequently encounters general resistance - as well as the positive struggle, attacking to make way for its own world of ideas, requires determined fighters. And so a philosophy will lead its idea to victory only if it unites the most courageous and energetic elements of its epoch and people in its ranks, and puts them into the solid forms of a fighting organization. For this, however, taking these elements into consideration, it must pick out certain ideas from its general world picture and clad them in a form which, in its precise, slogan-like brevity, seems suited to serve as a creed for a new community of men. While the program of a solely political party is the formula for a healthy outcome of the next elections, the program of a philosophy is the formulation of a declaration of war against the existing order against a definite state of affairs; in short, against an existing view of life in general.

It is not necessary that every individual fighting for this philosophy should obtain a full insight and precise knowledge of the ultimate ideas and thought processes of the leaders of the movement. What is necessary is that some few, really great ideas be made clear to him, and that the essential fundamental lines be burned inextinguishably into him, so that he is entirely permeated by the necessity of the victory of his movement and its doctrine. The individual soldier is not initiated into the thought processes of higher strategy either. He is, on the contrary, trained in rigid discipline and fanatical faith in the justice and power of his cause, and taught to stake his life for it without reservation; the same must occur with the individual adherent of a movement of great scope, great future, and the greatest will.

Useless as an army would be, whose individual soldiers were all generals, even if it were only by virtue of their education and their insight, equally useless is a political movement, fighting for a philosophy, if it is only a reservoir of 'bright' people. No, it also needs the primitive soldier, since otherwise an inner discipline is unobtainable.

It lies in the nature of an organization that it can only exist if a broad mass, with a more emotional attitude, serves a high intellectual leadership. A company of two hundred men of equal intellectual ability would in the long run be harder to discipline than a company of a hundred and ninety intellectually less capable men and ten with higher education.

Social Democracy in its day drew the greatest profit from this fact. It took members of the broad masses, discharged from military service where they had been trained in discipline! and drew them into its equally rigid party discipline. And its organization represented an army of officers and soldiers. The German manual worker became the soldier, the Jewish intellectual the officer; and the German trade-union officials can be regarded as the corps of noncommissioned officers. The thing which our bourgeoisie always viewed with headshaking, the fact that only the so-called uneducated masses belonged to the Marxist movement, was in reality the basis for its success. For while the bourgeois parties with their one-sided intellectualism constituted a worthless undisciplined band, the Marxists with their unintellectual human material formed an army of party soldiers, who obeyed their Jewish leader as blindly as formerly their German officer. The German bourgeoisie, which as a matter of principle never concerned itself with psychological problems because it stood so high above them, found it, here too, unnecessary to reflect, and recognize the deeper meaning, as well as the secret danger, of this fact. They thought, on the contrary, that a political movement, formed only from the circles of the 'intelligentsia,' is for this very reason more valuable and possesses a greater claim, in fact a greater likelihood, of taking over the government than the uneducated masses. They never understood that the strength of a political party lies by no means in the greatest possible independent intellect of the individual members, but rather in the disciplined obedience with which its members follow the intellectual leadership. The decisive factor is the leadership itself. If two bodies of troops battle each other, the one to conquer will not be the one in which every individual has received the highest strategic training, but that one which has the most superior leadership and at the same time the most disciplined, blindly obedient, best-drilled troop.

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This is the basic insight which we must constantly bear in mind in examining the possibility of transforming a philosophy into action.

And so, if, in order to carry a philosophy to victory, we must transform it into a fighting movement, logically the program of the movement must take into consideration the human material that stands at its disposal. As immutable as the ultimate aims and the leading ideas must be, with equal wisdom and psychological soundness the recruiting program must be adapted to the minds of those without whose aid the most beautiful idea would remain eternally an idea.

If the folkish idea wants to arrive at a clear from the unclear will of today, it must pick out from the broad world of its ideas certain guiding principles, suited in their essence and content to binding a broad mass of men, that mass which alone guarantees the struggle for this idea as laid down in our philosophy.

Therefore, the program of the new movement was summed up in a few guiding principles, twenty-five in all. They were devised to give, primarily to the man of the people, a rough picture of the movement's aims. They are in a sense a political creed, which on the one hand recruits for the movement and on the other is suited to unite and weld together by a commonly recognized (obligation those who have been recruited.

Here the following insight must never leave us: Since the so-called program of the movement is absolutely correct in its ultimate aims, but in its formulation had to take psychological forces into account, in the course of time the conviction may well arise that in individual instances certain of the guiding principles ought perhaps to be framed differently, given a better formulation. Every attempt to do this, however, usually works out catastrophically. For in this way something which should be unshakable is submitted to discussion, which, as soon as a single point is deprived of its dogmatic, creedlike formulation, will not automatically yield a new, better, and above all unified, formulation, but will far sooner lead to endless debates and a general confusion. In such a case, it always remains to be considered which is better: a new, happier formulation which causes an argument within the movement, or a form which at the moment may not be the very best, but which represents a solid, unshakable, inwardly unified organism. And any examination will show that the latter is preferable. For, since in changes it is always merely the outward formulation that is involved, such corrections will again and again seem possible or desirable. Finally, in view of the superficial character of men, there is the great danger that they will see the essential task of a movement in this purely outward formulation of a program. Then the will and the power to fight for an idea recede, and the activity which should turn outward will wear itself out in inner programmatic squabbles.

With a doctrine that is really sound in its broad outlines, it is less harmful to retain a formulation, even if it should not entirely correspond to reality, than by improving it to expose what hitherto seemed a granite principle of the movement to general discussion with all its evil consequences. Above all, it is impossible as long as a movement is still fighting for victory. For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure?

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The truth is that the most essential substance must never be sought in the outward formulation, but only and always in the inner sense. This is immutable; and in the interest of this immutable inner sense, we can only wish that the movement preserve the necessary strength to fight for it by avoiding all actions that splinter and create uncertainty.

Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas. It has recognized quite correctly that its power of resistance does not lie in its lesser or greater adaptation to the scientific findings of the moment, which in reality are always fluctuating, but rather in rigidly holding to dogmas once established, for it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith. And so today it stands more firmly than ever. It can be prophesied that in exactly the same measure in which appearances evade us, it will gain more and more blind support as a static pole amid the flight of appearances.

And so, anyone who really and seriously desires the victory of a folkish philosophy must not only recognize that, for the achievement of such a success in the first place, only a movement capable of struggle is suitable, out that, in the second place, such a movement itself will stand firm only if based on unshakable certainty and firmness in its program. It must not run the risk of making concessions in its formulation to the momentary spirit of the times, but must retain forever a form that has once been found favorable, in any case until crowned by victory. Before that, any attempt to bring about arguments as to the expediency of this or that point in the program splinters the solidity and the fighting force of the movement, proportionately as its adherents participate in such an inner discussion. This does not mean that an 'improvement' carried out today might not tomorrow be subjected to renewed critical tests only to find a better substitute the day after tomorrow. Once you tear down barriers in this connection, you open a road, the beginning of which is known, but whose end is lost in the infinite.

This important realization had to be applied in the young National Socialist movement. The National Socialist German Workers' Party obtained with its program of twenty-five theses a foundation which must remain unshakable. The task of the present and future members of our movement must not consist in a critical revision of these theses, but rather in being bound by them. For otherwise the next generation in turn could, with the same right, squander its strength on such purely formal work within the party, instead of recruiting new adherents and thereby new forces for the movement. For the great number of the adherents, the essence of our movement will consist less in the letter of our theses than in the meaning which we are able to give them.

It was to these realizations that the young movement owed its name; the program was later framed according to them and, furthermore, the manner of their dissemination is based on them. In order to help the folkish ideas to victory, a party of the people had to be created, a party which consists not only of intellectual leaders, but also of manual workers!

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Any attempt to realize folkish ideas without such a militant organization would today, just as in the past and in the eternal future, remain without success. And so the movement has not only the right, but also the duty, of regarding itself as a pioneer and representative of these ideas. To the same degree as the basic ideas of the National Socialist movement are folkish, the folkish ideas are National Socialist. And if National Socialism wants to conquer, it must unconditionally and exclusively espouse this truth. Here, too, it has not only the right, but also the duty, of sharply emphasizing the fact that any attempt to put forward the folkish idea outside the framework of the National Socialist German Workers' Party is impossible, and in most cases based on a positive swindle.

If today anyone reproaches the movement for acting as if the folkish idea were their monopoly, there is but one answer:

Not only a monopoly, but a working monopoly.

For what previously existed under this concept was not suited to influence the destiny of our people even in the slightest, since all these ideas lacked a clear and coherent formulation. For the most part there were single, disconnected ideas of greater or lesser soundness, not seldom standing in mutual contradiction, in no case having any inner tie between them. And even had such a tie been present, in its weakness it would never have sufficed to orientate and build a movement on.

Only the National Socialist movement accomplished this.

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If today all sorts of clubs and clublets, groups and grouplets, and, if you will, 'big parties' lay claim to the word 'folkish,' this in itself is a consequence of the influence of the National Socialist movement. Without its work, it would never have occurred to all these organizations even to pronounce the word 'folkish.' This word would have meant nothing to them, and especially their leading minds would have stood in no relation of any sort to this concept. Only the work of the NSDAP for the first time made this concept a word full of content, which is now taken up by every conceivable kind of people; above all, in its own successful campaigning activity, it snowed and demonstrated the force of these folkish ideas, so that mere desire to get ahead forces the others, ostensibly at least, to desire similar ends.

Just as hitherto they used everything for their petty election speculation, the folkish concept has today remained for them only an external empty slogan with which they attempt to counterbalance, among their own members, the attractive force of the National Socialist movement. For it is only concern for their own existence as well as fear of the rise of our new philosophy-borne movement, whose universal importance as well as its dangerous exclusiveness they sense, that puts into their mouth words which eight years ago they did not know, seven years ago ridiculed, six years ago branded as absurd, five years ago combated, four years ago hated, three years ago persecuted, only at length to annex them two years ago, and, combined with the rest of their vocabulary, to use them as a battle-cry in the fight.

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And even today we must point out again and again that all these parties lack the slightest idea of what the German people needs. The most striking proof of this is the superficiality with which they mouth the word 'folkish.'

And no less dangerous are all those who horse around pretending to be folkish, forge fantastic plans, for the most part based on nothing but some id¨¦e fixe, which in itself might be sound, but in its isolation remains none the less without any importance for the formation of a great unified fighting community, and in no case is suited to building one. These people, who partly from their own thinking, partly from what they have read, brew up a program, are frequently more dangerous than the open enemies of the folkish idea. In the best case they are sterile theoreticians, but for the most part disastrous braggarts, and not seldom they believe that with flowing beards and primeval Teutonic gestures they can mask the intellectual and mental hollowness of their activities and abilities.

In contrast to all these useless attempts, it is therefore good if we recall to mind the time in which the young National Socialist movement began its struggle.

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End of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 5: PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 6: THE STRUGGLE OF THE EARLY PERIOD - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SPOKEN WORD

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The first great meeting on February 24, 1920, in the Festsaal [Banquet Hall] of the Hofbräuhaus, had not died down in our ears when the preparations for the next were made. While up till then it had been considered risky to hold a little meeting once a month or even once every two weeks in a city like Munich, a large mass meeting was now to take place every seven days; in other words, once a week. I do not need to assure you that there was but one fear that constantly tormented us: would the people come and would they listen to us? - though I personally, even then, had the unshakable conviction that once they were there, the people would stay and follow the speech.

In this period the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbräuhaus assumed an almost sacred significance for us National Socialists. Every week a meeting, almost always in this room, and each time the hall better filled and the people more devoted. Beginning with the 'War Guilt,' which at that time nobody bothered about, and the 'Peace Treaties,' nearly everything was taken up that seemed agitationally expedient or ideologically necessary. Especially to the peace treaties themselves the greatest attention was given. What prophecies the young movement kept making to the great masses! And nearly all of which have now been realized! Today it is easy to speak or write about these things. But in those days a public mass meeting, attended, not by bourgeois shopkeepers, but by incited proletarians, and dealing with the topic, 'The Peace Treaty of Versailles,' was taken as an attack on the Republic and a sign of a reactionary if not monarchistic attitude. At the very first sentence containing a criticism of Versailles, you had the stereotyped cry flung at you: 'What about Brest-Litovsk?' 'And Brest-Litovsk?' The masses roared this again and again, until gradually they grew hoarse or the speaker finally gave up his attempt to convince them. You felt like dashing your head against the wall in despair over such people! They did not want to hear or understand that Versailles was a shame and a disgrace, and not even that this dictated peace was an unprecedented pillaging of our people. The destructive work of the Marxists and the poison of enemy propaganda had deprived the people of any sense. And yet we had not even the right to complain! For how immeasurably great was the blame on another side! What had the bourgeoisie done to put a halt to this frightful disintegration, to oppose it and open the way to truth by a better and more thorough enlightenment? Nothing, and again nothing. In those days I saw them nowhere, all the great folkish apostles of today. Perhaps they spoke in little clubs, at teatables, or in circles of like-minded people, but where they should have been, among the wolves, they did not venture ; except if there was a chance to howl with the pack.

But to me it was clear in those days that for the small basic nucleus which for the present constituted the movement, the question of war guilt had to be cleared up, and cleared up in the sense of historic truth. That our movement should transmit to the broadest masses knowledge of the peace treaty was the premise for the future success of the movement. At that time, when they all still regarded this peace as a success of democracy, we had to form a front against it and engrave ourselves forever in the minds of men as an enemy of this treaty, so that later, when the harsh reality of this treacherous frippery would be revealed in its naked hate, the recollection of our position at that time would win us confidence.

Even then I always came out in favor of taking a position in important questions of principle against all public opinion when it assumed a false attitude - disregarding all considerations of popularity, hatred, or struggle. The NSDAP should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!

There exists, of course, and especially for every movement that is still weak, a great temptation, in moments when a more powerful enemy has succeeded in driving the people to a mad decision or to a false attitude through his arts of seduction, to go along and join the shouting, particularly when there are a few reasons - even if they are merely illusory - which, from the standpoint of the young movement itself, might argue for this course. Human cowardice will seek such reasons so vigorously that it almost always finds something which would give a semblance of justification, even from one's 'own standpoint,' for participating in such a crime.

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I have several times experienced such cases, in which supreme energy was necessary to keep the ship of the movement from drifting with the artificially aroused general current or rather from being driven by it. The last time was when our infernal press, to which the existence of the German people is Hecuba, succeeded in puffing up the South Tyrol question to an importance which will be catastrophic for the German people. Without considering whom they were serving thereby, many so-called ' national' men and parties and organizations, solely from cowardice in the face of Jew-incited public opinion, joined the general outcry and senselessly helped to support the fight against a system which we Germans, precisely in this present-day situation, must feel to be the sole ray of light in this degenerating world. While the international world Jew slowly but surely strangles us, our so-called patriots shouted against a man and a system which dared, in one corner of the earth at least, to free themselves from the Jewish-Masonic embrace and oppose a nationalistic resistance to this international world poisoning. It was, however, too alluring for weak characters simply to set their sails by the wind and capitulate to the clamor of public opinion. And a capitulation it was! Men are such base liars that they may not admit it, even to themselves, but it remains the truth that only cowardice and fear of the popular sentiment stirred up by the Jews impelled them to join in. All other explanations are miserable evasions devised by the petty sinner conscious of his guilt.

And so it was necessary to shake the movement with an iron fist to preserve it from ruin by this tendency. To attempt such a shift at a moment when public opinion, fanned by every driving force, was burning only in one direction is indeed not very popular at the moment and sometimes puts the venturesome leader in almost mortal peril. But not a few men in history have at such moments been stoned for an action for which posterity, at a later date, had every cause to thank them on its knees.

It is with this that a movement must reckon and not with the momentary approval of the present. It may be that in such hours the individual feels afraid; but he must not forget that after every such hour salvation comes at length, and that a movement that wants to renew a world must serve, not the moment, but the future.

In this connection it can be established that the greatest and most enduring successes in history tend for the most part to be those which in their beginnings found the least understanding because they stood in the sharpest conflict with general public opinion, with its ideas and its will.

Even then, on the first day of our public appearance, we had a chance to experience this. Truly we did not 'curry favor with the masses,' but everywhere opposed the lunacy of these people. Nearly always it came about that in these years I faced an assemblage of people who believed the opposite of what I wanted to say, and wanted the opposite of what I believed. Then it was the work of two hours to lift two or three thousand people out of a previous conviction, blow by blow to shatter the foundation of their previous opinions, and finally to lead them across to our convictions and our philosophy of life.

In those days I learned something important in a short time, to strike the weapon of reply out of the enemy's hands myself. We soon noticed that our opponents, especially their discussion speakers, stepped forward with a definite 'repertory' in which constantly recurring objections to our assertions were raised, so that the uniformity of this procedure pointed to a conscious, unified schooling. And that was indeed the case. Here we had an opportunity to become acquainted with the incredible discipline of our adversaries' propaganda, and it is still my pride today to have found the means, not only to render this propaganda ineffective but in the end to strike its makers with their own weapon. Two years later I was a master of this art.

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In every single speech it was important to realize clearly in advance the presumable content and form of the objections to be expected in the discussion, and to pull every one of them apart in the speech itself. Here it was expedient to cite the possible objections ourselves at the outset and demonstrate their untenability; thus, the listener, even if he had come stuffed full of the objections he had been taught, but otherwise with an honest heart, was more easily won over when we disposed of the doubts that had been imprinted on his memory. The stuff that had been drummed into him was automatically refuted and his attention drawn more and more to the speech.

This is the reason why, right after my first lecture on the 'Peace Treaty of Versailles,' which I had delivered to the troops while still a so-called 'educator,' I changed the lecture and now spoke of the 'Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.' For after a short time, in fact, in the course of the discussion about this first speech of mine, I was able to ascertain that the people really knew nothing at all about the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but that the adroit propaganda of their parties had succeeded in representing this very treaty as one of the most shameful acts of rape in the world. The persistence with which this lie was presented over and over to the great masses accounted for the fact that millions of Germans regarded the peace treaty of Versailles as nothing more than just retribution for the crime committed by us at Brest-Litovsk, thus viewing any real struggle against Versailles as an injustice and sometimes remaining in the sincerest moral indignation. And this among other things was why the shameless and monstrous word 'reparations' was able to make itself at home in Germany. This vile hypocrisy really seemed to millions of our incited national comrades an accomplishment of higher justice. Dreadful, but it was so. The best proof of this was offered by the propaganda I initiated against the peace treaty of Versailles, which I introduced by some enlightenment regarding the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I contrasted the two peace treaties, compared them point for point, showed the actual boundless humanity of the one treaty compared to the inhuman cruelty of the second, and the result was telling. At that time I spoke on this theme at meetings of two thousand people, and often I was struck by the glances of three thousand six hundred hostile eyes. And three hours later I had before me a surging mass full of the holiest indignation and boundless wrath. Again a great lie had been torn out of the hearts and brains of a crowd numbering thousands, and a truth implanted in its place.

I considered these two lectures on 'The True Causes of the World War' and on 'The Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles,' the most important of all, and so I repeated and repeated them dozens of times, always renewing the form, until, on this point at least, a certain clear and unified conception became current among the people from among whom the movement gathered its first members.

For myself, moreoever, the meetings had the advantage that I gradually transformed myself into a speaker for mass meetings, that I became practiced in the pathos and the gestures which a great hall, with its thousands of people, demands.

At that time, except - as already emphasized - in small circles, I saw no enlightenment in this direction from the parties which today have their mouths so full of words and act as if they had brought about the change in public opinion. When a so-called 'national politician' somewhere delivered a speech along these lines, it was only to circles who for the most part already shared his conviction, and for whom his utterances represented at most an intensification of their own opinions. This was not the important thing at that time; the important thing was to win by enlightenment and propaganda those people who, by virtue of their education and opinions, still stood on hostile ground.

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The leaflet, too, was put into the service of this enlightenment. While still in the army, I had written a leaflet comparing the peace treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles, and it was distributed in large editions. Later I took over stocks of it for the party, and here again the effect was good. The first meetings, in general, were distinguished by the fact that the tables were covered with all sorts of leaflets, newspapers, pamphlets, etc. But the chief emphasis was laid on the spoken word. And actually it alone - for general psychological reasons - is able to bring about really great changes.

I have already stated in the first volume that all great, world-shaking events have been brought about, not by written matter, but by the spoken word. This led to a lengthy discussion in a part of the press, where, of course, such an assertion was sharply attacked, particularly by our bourgeois wiseacres. But the very reason why this occurred confutes the doubters. For the bourgeois intelligentsia protest against such a view only because they themselves obviously lack the power and ability to influence the masses by the spoken word, since they have thrown themselves more and more into purely literary activity and renounced the real agitational activity of the spoken word. Such habits necessarily lead in time to what distinguishes our bourgeoisie today; that is, to the loss of the psychological instinct for mass effect and mass influence.

While the speaker gets a continuous correction of his speech from the crowd he is addressing, since he can always see in the faces of his listeners to what extent they can follow his arguments with understanding and whether the impression and the effect of his words lead to the desired goal - the writer does not know his readers at all. Therefore, to begin with, he will not aim at a definite mass before his eyes, but will keep his arguments entirely general. By this to a certain degree he loses psychological subtlety and in consequence suppleness. And so, by and large, a brilliant speaker will be able to write better than a brilliant writer can speak, unless he continuously practices this art. On top of this there is the fact that the mass of people as such is lazy; that they remain inertly in the spirit of their old habits and, left to themselves, will take up a piece of written matter only reluctantly if it is not in agreement with what they themselves believe and does not bring them what they had hoped for. Therefore, an article with a definite tendency is for the most part read only by people who can already be reckoned to this tendency. At most a leaflet or a poster can, by its brevity, count on getting a moment's attention from someone who thinks differently. The picture in all its forms up to the film has greater possibilities. Here a man needs to use his brains even less; it suffices to look, or at most to read extremely brief texts, and thus many will more readily accept a pictorial presentation than read an article of any length. The picture brings them in a much briefer time, I might almost say at one stroke, the enlightenment which they obtain from written matter only after arduous reading.

The essential point, however, is that a piece of literature never knows into what hands it will fall, and yet must retain its definite form. In general the effect will be the greater, the more this form corresponds to the intellectual level and nature of those very people who will be its readers. A book that is destined for the broad masses must, therefore, attempt from the very beginning to have an effect, both in style and elevation, different from a work intended for higher intellectual classes.

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Only by this kind of adaptability does written matter approach the spoken word. To my mind, the speaker can treat the same theme as the book; he will, if he is a brilliant popular orator, not be likely to repeat the same reproach and the same substance twice in the same form. He will always let himself be borne by the great masses in such a way that instinctively the very words come to his lips that he needs to speak to the hearts of his audience. And if he errs, even in the slightest, he has the living correction before him. As I have said, he can read from the facial expression of his audience whether, firstly, they understand what he is saying, whether, secondly, they can follow the speech as a whole, and to what extent, thirdly, he has convinced them of the soundness of what he has said. If - firstly - he sees that they do not understand him, he will become so primitive and clear in his explanations that even the last member of his audience has to understand him; if he feels - secondly - that they cannot follow him, he will construct his ideas so cautiously and slowly that even the weakest member of the audience is not left behind, and he will - thirdly - if he suspects that they do not seem convinced of the soundness of his argument, repeat it over and over in constantly new examples. He himself will utter their objections, which he senses though unspoken, and go on confuting them and exploding them, until at length even the last group of an opposition, by its very bearing and facial expression, enables him to recognize its capitulation to his arguments.

Here again it is not seldom a question of overcoming prejudices which are not based on reason, but, for the most part unconsciously, are supported only by sentiment. To overcome this barrier of instinctive aversion, of emotional haired, of prejudiced rejection, is a thousand times harder than to correct a faulty or erroneous scientific opinion. False concepts and poor knowledge can be eliminated by instruction, the resistance of the emotions never. Here only an appeal to these mysterious powers themselves can be effective; and the writer can hardly ever accomplish this, but almost exclusively the orator.

The most striking proof of this is furnished by the fact that, despite a bourgeois press that is often very skillfully gotten up, flooding our people with editions running into millions, this press could not prevent the masses from becoming the sharpest enemy of its own bourgeois world. The whole newspaper flood and all the books that are turned out year after year by the intellectuals slide off the millions of the lower classes like water from oiled leather. This can prove only two things: either the unsoundness of the content of this whole literary production of our bourgeois world or the impossibility of reaching the heart of the broad masses solely by written matter. Especially, indeed, when this written matter demonstrates so unpsychological an attitude as is here the case.

Let no one reply (as a big German national newspaper in Berlin tried to do) that Marxism itself, by its writings, especially by the effect of the great basic work of Karl Marx, provides proof counter to this assertion. Seldom has anyone made a more superficial attempt to support an erroneous view. What gave Marxism its astonishing power over the great masses is by no means the formal written work of the Jewish intellectual world, but rather the enormous oratorical propaganda wave which took possession of the great masses in the course of the years. Of a hundred thousand German workers, not a hundred on the average know this work, which has always been studied by a thousand times more intellectuals and especially Jews than by real adherents of this movement from the great lower classes. And this work was not written for the great masses, but exclusively for the intellectual leadership of that Jewish machine for world conquest; it was stoked subsequently with an entirely different fuel: the press. For that is what distinguishes the Marxist press from our bourgeois press. The Marxist press is written by agitators, and the bourgeois press would like to carry on agitation by means of writers. The Social Democratic yellow journalist, who almost always goes from the meeting hall to the newspaper office, knows his public like no one else. But the bourgeois scribbler who comes out of his study to confront the great masses is nauseated by their very fumes and faces them helplessly with the written word.

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What has won the millions of workers for Marxism is less the literary style of the Marxist church fathers than the indefatigable and truly enormous propaganda work of tens of thousands of untiring agitators, from the great agitator down to the small trade-union official and the shop steward and discussion speaker; this work consisted of the hundreds of thousands of meetings at which, standing on the table in smoky taverns, these people's orators hammered at the masses and thus were able to acquire a marvelous knowledge of this human material which really put them in a position to choose the best weapons for attacking the fortress of public opinion. And it consisted, furthermore, in the gigantic mass demonstrations, these parades of hundreds of thousands of men, which burned into the small, wretched individual the proud conviction that, paltry worm as he was, he was nevertheless a part of a great dragon, beneath whose burning breath the hated bourgeois world would some day go up in fire and flame and the proletarian dictatorship would celebrate its ultimate final victory.

Such propaganda produced the people who were ready and prepared to read a Social Democratic press, however, a press which itself in turn is not written, but which is spoken. For, while in the bourgeois camp professors and scholars, theoreticians and writers of all sorts, occasionally attempt to speak, in the Marxist movement the speakers occasionally try to write. And precisely the Jew, who is especially to be considered in this connection, will, in general, thanks to his lying dialectical skill and suppleness, even as a writer be more of an agitational orator than a literary creator.

That is the reason why the bourgeois newspaper world (quite aside from the fact that it, too, is mostly Jewified and therefore has no interest in really instructing the great masses) cannot exert the slightest influence on the opinion of the broadest sections of our people.

How hard it is to upset emotional prejudices, moods, sentiments, etc., and to replace them by others, on how many scarcely calculable influences and conditions success depends, the sensitive speaker can judge by the fact that even the time of day in which the lecture takes place can have a decisive influence on the effect. The same lecture, the same speaker, the same theme, have an entirely different effect at ten o'clock in the morning, at three o'clock in the afternoon, or at night. I myself as a beginner organized meetings for the morning, and especially remember a rally which we held in the Munich Kindl Keller as a protest 'against the oppression of German territories.' At that time it was Munich's largest hall and it seemed a very great venture. In order to make attendance particularly easy for the adherents of the movement and all the others who came, I set the meeting for a Sunday morning at ten o'clock. The result was depressing, yet at the same time extremely instructive: the hall was full, the impression really overpowering, but the mood ice cold; no one became warm, and I myself as a speaker felt profoundly unhappy at being unable to create any bond, not even the slightest contact, between myself and my audience. I thought I had not spoken worse than usual; but the effect seemed to be practically nil. Utterly dissatisfied, though richer by one experience, I left the meeting. Tests of the same sort that I later undertook led to the same result.

This should surprise no one. Go to a theater performance and witness a play at three o'clock in the afternoon and the same play with the same actors at eight at night, and you will be amazed at the difference in effect and impression. A man with fine feelings and the power to achieve clarity with regard to this mood will be able to establish at once that the impression made by the performance at three in the afternoon is not as great as that: made in the evening. The same applies even to a movie. This is important because in the theater it might be said that perhaps the actor does not take as much pains in the afternoon as at night. But a film is no different in the afternoon than at nine in the evening. No, the time itself exerts a definite effect, just as the hall does on me. There are halls which leave people cold for reasons that are hard to discern, but which somehow oppose the most violent resistance to any creation of mood. Traditional memories and ideas that are present in a man can also decisively determine an impression. Thus, a performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth will always have a different effect than anywhere else in the world. The mysterious magic of the house on the Festspielh¨¹gel in the old city of the margraves cannot be replaced or even compensated for by externals.

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In all these cases we have to do with an encroachment upon man's freedom of will. This applies most, of course, to meetings attended by people with a contrary attitude of will, who must now be won over to a new will. In the morning and even during the day people's will power seems to struggle with the greatest energy against an attempt to force upon them a strange will and a strange opinion. At night, however, they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will. For, in truth, every such meeting represents a wrestling bout between two opposing forces. The superior oratorical art of a dominating preacher will succeed more easily in winning to the new will people who have themselves experienced a weakening of their force of resistance in the most natural way than those who are still in full possession of their mental tension and will.

The same purpose, after all, is served by the artificially made and yet mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the burning lamps, incense, censers, etc.

In this wrestling bout of the speaker with the adversaries he wants to convert, he will gradually achieve that wonderful sensitivity to the psychological requirements of propaganda, which the writer almost always lacks. Hence the written word in its limited effect will in general serve more to retain, to reinforce, to deepen, a point of view or opinion that is already present. Really great historical changes are not induced by the written word, but at most accompanied by it.

Let no one believe that the French Revolution would ever have come about through philosophical theories if it had not found an army of agitators led by demagogues in the grand style, who whipped up the passions of the people tormented to begin with, until at last there occurred that terrible volcanic eruption which held all Europe rigid with fear. And likewise the greatest revolutionary upheaval of the most recent period, the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, was brought about, not by Lenin's writings, but by the hate-fomenting oratorical activity of countless of the greatest and the smallest apostles of agitation.

The illiterate common people were not, forsooth, fired with enthusiasm for the Communist Revolution by the theoretical reading of Karl Marx, but solely by the glittering heaven which thousands of agitators, themselves, to be sure, all in the service of an idea, talked into the people.

And that has always been so and will eternally remain so.

It is entirely in keeping with the stubborn unworldliness of our German intelligentsia to believe that the writer must necessarily be mentally superior to the speaker. This conception is illustrated in the most precious way by a criticism appearing in the above-mentioned national newspaper, in which it is stated that one is so often disappointed to see the speech of a recognized great orator suddenly in print. This reminds me of another criticism which came into my hands in the course of the War; it painfully subjected the speeches of Lloyd George, who at that time was still munitions minister, to the magnifying glass, only to arrive at the brilliant discovery that these speeches were scientifically inferior products and hackneyed to boot. Later, in the form of a little volume, these speeches came into my own hands, and I had to laugh aloud that an average German knight of the ink-pot should possess no understanding for these psychological masterpieces in the art of mass propaganda. This man judged these speeches solely according to the impression they left on his own blas¨¦ nature, while the great English demagogue had set out solely to exert the greatest possible effect on the mass of his listeners, and in the broadest sense on the entire English lower class. Regarded from this standpoint, the speeches of this Englishman were the most wonderful performances, for they testified to a positively amazing knowledge of the soul of the broad masses of the people. And their effect was truly powerful.

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Compare to it the helpless stammering of a Bethmann-Hollweg. These speeches, to be sure, were apparently wittier, but in reality they only showed this man's inability to speak to his people, which he simply did not know. Nevertheless, the average sparrow brain of a German scribbler, equipped, it goes without saying, with a high scientific education, manages to judge the intelligence of the English minister by the impression which a speech aimed at mass effect makes on his own brain, calcified with sheer science, and to compare it with that of a German statesman whose brilliant chatter naturally finds more receptive soil in him. Lloyd George proved that he was not only the equal in genius of a Bethmann-Hollweg, but was a thousand times his superior, precisely by the fact that in his speeches he found that form and that expression which opened to him the heart of his people and in the end made this people serve his will completely. Precisely in the primitiveness of his language, the primordiality of its forms of expression, and the use of easily intelligible examples of the simplest sort lies the proof of the towering political ability of this Englishman. For I must not measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect it exerts on the people. And this alone gives the standard for the speaker's genius.

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The amazing development of our movement, which only a few years ago was founded out of the void and today is considered worthy to be sharply persecuted by all the inner and outer enemies of our people, must be attributed to the constant consideration and application of these realizations.

Important as the movement's literature may be, it will in our present position be more important for the equal and uniform training of the upper and lower leaders than for the winning of the hostile masses. Only in the rarest cases will a convinced Social Democrat or a fanatical Communist condescend to acquire a National Socialist pamphlet, let alone a book, to read it and from it gain an insight into our conception of life or to study the critique of his own. Even a newspaper will be read but very seldom if it does not bear the party stamp. Besides, this would be of little use; for the general aspect of a single copy of a newspaper is so chopped up and so divided in its effect that looking at it once cannot be expected to have any influence on the reader We may and must expect no one, for whom pennies count, to subscribe steadily to an opposing newspaper merely from the urge for objective enlightenment. Scarcely one out of ten thousand will do this. Only a man who has already been won to the movement will steadily read the party organ, and he will read it as a running news service of his movement.

The case is quite different with the 'spoken' leaflet! The man in the street will far sooner take it into his hands, especially if he gets it for nothing, and all the more if the headlines plastically treat a topic which at the moment is in everyone's mouth. By a more or less thorough perusal, it may be possible by such a leaflet to call his attention to new viewpoints and attitudes, even in fact to a new movement. But even this, in the most favorable case, will provide only a slight impetus, never an accomplished fact. For the leaflet, too, can only suggest or point to something, and its effect will only appear in combination with a subsequent more thoroughgoing instruction and enlightenment of its readers. And this is and remains the mass meeting.

The mass meeting is also necessary for the reason that in it the individual, who at first while becoming a supporter of a young movement, feels lonely and easily succumbs to the fear of being alone, for the first time gets the picture of a larger community, which in most people has a strengthening, encouraging effect. The same man, within a company or a battalion, surrounded by all his comrades, would set out on an attack with a lighter heart than if left entirely on his own. In the crowd he always feels somewhat sheltered, even if a thousand reasons actually argue against it.

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