Mein Kampf aka My Struggle

last SG · 2004-04-07T16:07:10+00:00

CONCLUSION ON NOVEMBER 9, 1923, in the fourth year of its existence, the National Socialist German Workers' Party was dissolved and prohibited in the whole...

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In 1918 there could be no question of a systematic anti-Semitism. I still remember the difficulties one encountered if one so much as uttered the word Jew. Either one was stupidly gaped at, or one experienced the most violent resistance. Our first attempts to show the public the real enemy then seemed almost hopeless, and only very slowly did things begin to take a better turn. Bad as the organizational set-up of the Watch and Ward League (Schulz- und Trutzbund) was, it nonetheless had great merit in having reopened the Jewish question as such. At all events, in the winter of 1918-19, something like anti-Semitism began slowly to take root. Later, to be sure, the National Socialist movement drove the Jewish question to the fore in quite a different way. Above all, it succeeded in lifting this problem out of the narrow, limited circle of bourgeois and petit bourgeois strata and transforming it into the driving impulse of a great people's movement. But scarcely had it succeeded in giving the German people its great, unifying idea of struggle in this question than the Jew commenced to counter-attack. He seized upon his old weapon. With miraculous speed he threw the torch of discord into the folkish movement and sowed dissension. As things then stood, the only possibility of occupying the public attention with other questions and withholding a concentrated attack from the Jews lay in raising the Ultramontane question, and in the resulting clash between Catholicism and Protestantism. These men can never atone for the wrong they did our people in hurling this question into their midst. In any case the Jew reached his desired goal: Catholics and Protestants wage a merry war with one another, and the mortal enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom laughs up his sleeve.

Just as formerly they were able to busy public opinion for years with the struggle between federalism and centralization, thus wearing it down with exhaustion, while the Jew sold the freedom of the nation and betrayed our fatherland to international high finance, now again he succeeds in causing the two German denominations to assail one another, while the foundations of both are corroded and undermined by the poison of the international world Jew.

Bear in mind the devastations which Jewish bastardization visits on our nation each day, and consider that this blood poisoning can be removed from our national body only after centuries, if at all; consider further how racial disintegration drags down and often destroys the last Aryan values of our German people, so that our strength as a culture-bearing nation is visibly more and more involved in a regression and we run the risk, in our big cities at least, of reaching the point where southern Italy is today. This contamination of our blood, blindly ignored by hundreds of thousands of our people, is carried on systematically by the Jew today. Systematically these black parasites of the nation defile our inexperienced young blond girls and thereby destroy something which can no longer be replaced in this world. Both, yes, both Christian denominations look on indifferently at this desecration and destruction of a noble and unique living creature, given to the earth by God's grace. The significance of this for the future of the earth does not lie in whether the Protestants defeat the Catholics or the Catholics the Protestants, but in whether the Aryan man is preserved for the earth or dies out. Nevertheless, the two denominations do not fight today against the destroyer of this man, but strive mutually to annihilate one another. The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated.

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For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will. Therefore, let every man be active, each in his own denomination if you please, and let every man take it as his first and most sacred duty to oppose anyone who in his activity by word or deed steps outside the confines of his religious community and tries to butt into the other. For in Germany to attack the special characteristics of a denomination, within the religious schism we already have with us, necessarily leads to a war of annihilation between the two denominations. Our conditions permit here of no comparison say with France or Spain, let alone Italy. In all three countries, for example, a fight can be preached against clericalism or Ultramontanism, without running the risk that in this endeavor the French, Spanish, or Italian people as such will fall apart. In Germany, however, this may not be done, for here it is certain that the Protestants would also participate in such a movement. And thus the resistance, which would elsewhere be carried on only by Catholics against encroachments of a political nature by their own high clergy, immediately assumes the character of an attack of Protestantism against Catholicism. What is tolerated from members of the same denomination, even when it is unjust, is at once sharply rejected at the outset, as soon as the assailant belongs to another creed. This goes so far that even men, who themselves would be perfectly willing to correct a visible abuse within their own religious community, at once change their minds and turn their resistance outward as soon as such a correction is recommended, let alone demanded, by a source not belonging to their community. They regard this as an unjustified and impermissible, nay, indecent attempt to mix in matters which do not concern the party in question. Such attempts are not pardoned even if they are justified by the higher right of the interests of the national community, since today religious sentiments still go deeper than all considerations of national and political expediency. And this is in no way changed by driving the two denominations into an embittered mutual war, but could only change if, through compatibility on both sides, the nation is given a future which by its greatness would gradually have a conciliatory effect in this province as elsewhere.

I do not hesitate to declare that I regard the men who today draw the folkish movement into the crisis of religious quarrels as worse enemies of my people than any international Communist. For to convert the latter is the mission of the National Socialist movement. But anyone in its own ranks who leads it away from its true mission is acting damnably. Whether consciously or unconsciously is immaterial, he is a fighter for Jewish interests. For it is to the Jewish interest today to make the folkish movement bleed to death in a religious struggle at the moment when it is beginning to become a danger for the Jew. And I expressly emphasize the words bleed to death; for only a man without historical education can imagine that with this movement today a problem can be solved which has defied centuries and great statesmen.

For the rest, the facts speak for themselves. The gentlemen who in 1924 suddenly discovered that the highest mission of the folkish movement was the struggle against 'Ultramontanism' did not break Ultramontanism, but tore apart the folkish movement. I must also lodge protest against any immature mind in the ranks of the folkish movement imagining that he can do what even a Bismarck could not do. It will always be the highest duty of the top leadership of the National Socialist movement to offer the sharpest opposition to any attempt to drive the National Socialist movement into such struggles, and immediately to remove the propagandists of such an intention from the ranks of the movement. And actually, by autumn, 1923, we succeeded entirely in this. In the ranks of the movement, the most devout Protestant could sit beside the most devout Catholic, without coming into the slightest conflict with his religious convictions. The mighty common struggle which both carried on against the destroyer of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutually to respect and esteem one another. And yet, in these very years, the movement carried on the bitterest fight against the Center, though never on religious, but exclusively on national, racial, and economico-political grounds. The results spoke in our favor, just as today they testify against the know-it-alls.

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In recent years things have sometimes gone so far that folkish circles in the God-forsaken blindness of their denominational squabbles did not even recognize the madness of their actions from the fact that atheistic Marxist newspapers suddenly, when convenient, became advocates of religious communities, and tried to compromise one or the other by bandying back and forth remarks that were sometimes really too stupid, and thus stir up the fire to the extreme.

Especially with a people like the Germans, who have so often demonstrated in their history that they were capable of waging wars down to the last drop of blood for phantoms, any such battle cry will be mortally dangerous. In this way our people has always been diverted from the real practical questions of its existence. While we devoured each other in religious squabbles, the rest of the world was distributed. And while the folkish movement considers whether the Ultramontane peril is greater than the Jewish peril or vice versa, the Jew destroys the racial foundations of our existence and thus destroys our people for all time. As far as this variety of 'folkish' warriors are concerned, I can only wish the National Socialist movement and the German people with all my heart: Lord, protect them from such friends and they will settle with their enemies by themselves.

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The struggle between federalism and centralization so shrewdly propagated by the Jews in 1919-20-21 and afterward, forced the National Socialist movement, though absolutely rejecting it, to take a position on its essential problems.

Should Germany be a federated or a unified state, and what for practical purposes must be understood by the two? To me the second seems the more important question, because it is not only fundamental to the understanding of the whole problem, but also because it is clarifying and possesses a conciliatory character.

What is a federated state?

By a federated state we understand a league of sovereign states which band together of their own free will, on the strength of their sovereignty; ceding to the totality that share of their particular sovereign rights which makes possible and guarantees the existence of the common federation.

In practice this theoretical formulation does not apply entirely to any of the federated states existing on earth today. Least of all to the American Union, where, as far as the overwhelming part of the individual states are concerned, there can be no question of any original sovereignty, but, on the contrary, many of them were sketched into the total area of the Union in the course of time, so to speak. Hence in the individual states of the American Union we have mostly to do with smaller and larger territories, formed for technical, administrative reasons, and, often marked out with a ruler, states which previously had not and could not have possessed any state sovereignty of their own. For it was not these states that had formed the Union, on the contrary it was the Union which formed a great part of such so-called states. The very extensive special rights granted, or rather assigned, to the individual territories are not only in keeping with the whole character of this federation of states, but above all with the size of its area, its spatial dimensions which approach the scope of a continent. And so, as far as the states of the American Union are concerned, we cannot speak of their state sovereignty, but only of their constitutionally established and guaranteed rights, or better, perhaps, privileges.

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The above formulation is not fully and entirely applicable to Germany either. Although in Germany without doubt the individual states did exist first and in the form of states, and the Reich was formed out of them. But the very formation of the Reich did not take place on the basis of the free will or equal participation of the single states, but through the workings of the hegemony of one state among them, Prussia. The great difference between the German states, from the purely territorial standpoint, permits no comparison with the formation of the American Union, for instance. The difference in size between the smallest of the former federated states and the larger ones, let alone the largest, shows the non-similarity of their achievements, and else the inequality of their share in the founding of the Reich, the forming of the federated state. Actually, in most of these states there could be no question of a real sovereignty, except if state sovereignty was taken only as an official phrase. In reality, not only the past, but the present as well, had put an end to any number of these so-called 'sovereign states' and thus clearly demonstrated the weakness of these 'sovereign' formations.

I shall not state here how each of these states was historically formed, but I do want to say that in practically no case do they coincide with tribal boundaries. They are purely political phenomena, and their roots for the most part go back to the gloomiest epoch of the German Reich's impotence and of the national fragmentation which conditioned it and itself in turn was conditioned by it.

All this, in part at least, was taken into account by the constitution of the old Reich, in so far as it did not grant the individual states the same representation in the Bundesrat, but set up gradations corresponding to size and actual importance, as well as the achievement of the individual states in the formation of the Reich.

The sovereign rights waived by the single states to make possible the formation of the Reich were only in the smallest part surrendered of their own free will; in the greatest part they were either practically non-existent to begin with or were simply taken away under the pressure of superior Prussian power. At the same time, Bismarck did not act on the principle of giving to the Reich everything that could in any way be taken away from the individual states; his principle was to demand of the individual states only what the Reich absolutely needed. A principle as moderate as it was wise, which on the one hand took the highest consideration of custom and tradition, and on the other hand thereby assured the new Reich a great measure of love and joyful collaboration at the very outset. It is absolutely wrong, however, to attribute this decision of Bismarck to his conviction that the Reich thus possessed sufficient sovereign rights for all time. Bismarck had no such conviction; on the contrary, he only wanted to put off till the future what at the moment would have been hard to accomplish and to endure. He put his hope in the gradual compromises brought about by time and the pressure of development as such, which in the long run he credited with more strength than any attempt to break the momentary resistance of the individual states at once. Thus, he best demonstrated and proved the greatness of his statesmanship. For in reality the sovereignty of the Reich steadily grew at the expense of the sovereignty of the individual states. Time fulfilled Bismarck's expectations.

With the German collapse and the destruction of the German state form, this development was necessarily accelerated. For since the existence of the individual German states was attributable less to tribal foundations than to purely political causes, the significance of these individual states inevitably shriveled into nothing once the most essential embodiment of the political development of these states, the monarchic state form and their dynasties, had been excluded. A considerable number of these 'state formations' lost all internal stability, to such an extent that they voluntarily renounced any further existence and for reasons of pure expediency fused with others or merged with larger ones of their own free will: the most striking proof of the extraordinary weakness of these little formations and the small respect they enjoyed even among their own citizens.

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And so, if the elimination of the monarchic state form and its representatives in itself administered a strong blow to the Reich's character as a federated state, this was even more true of the assumption of the obligations resulting from the 'peace' treaty.

It was natural and self-evident that the financial sovereignty previously vested in the provinces should be lost to the Reich at the moment when the Reich due to the lost War was subjected to a financial obligation which would never have been met by individual contributions of the provinces. Also the further steps, which led to the taking over of the postal service and railroads by the Reich, were necessary effects of the enslavement of our people, gradually initiated by the peace treaties. The Reich was forced to take firm possession of more and more capital, in order to be able to meet the obligations which arose in consequence of further extortions.

Insane as the forms frequently were, in which the centralization was accomplished, the process in itself was logical and natural. Those to blame were the parties and the men who had not done everything in their power to end the War victoriously. Those to blame, especially in Bavaria, were the parties which in pursuit of selfish aims of their own, had during the War wrung from the principle of the Reich concessions which after its loss they had to restore ten times over. Avenging history! Seldom, however, has the punishment of Heaven come so swiftly after the crime as in this case. The same parties, which only a few years previous had placed the interests of their individual states - and this especially in Bavaria - above the interest of the Reich, were now compelled to look on as, beneath the pressure of events, the interest of the Reich throttled the existence of the individual states. All through their own complicity.

It is an unequaled hypocrisy to bemoan to the masses of voters (for only toward them is the agitation of our present-day parties directed) the loss of the sovereign rights of the individual provinces, while all these parties without exception outbid one another in a policy of fulfillment which in its ultimate consequences could not but lead to deep-seated changes inside Germany. Bismarck's Germany was free and unbound on the outside. This Reich did not possess financial obligations of so burdensome, and at the same time unproductive, a nature as the present Dawes-Germany has to bear. But internally as well, its competence was limited to a few matters and those absolutely necessary. Thus it could very well dispense with a financial sovereignty of its own, and live from the contributions of the provinces; and it goes without saying that, on the one hand, the continued possession of their own sovereign rights, and, on the other hand, comparatively small financial contributions to the Reich, were very conducive to satisfaction with the Reich in the provinces. However, it is incorrect, dishonest in fact, to make propaganda today with the assertion that the present lack of satisfaction with the Reich can be attributed solely to the financial bondage of the provinces to the Reich. No, that is not the real state of affairs. The diminished satisfaction with the Reich idea is not attributable to the loss of sovereign rights on the part of the provinces, but is rather the result of the deplorable way in which the German people is at present represented by its state. Despite all the Reichsbanner rallies and celebrations in honor of the constitution, the present Reich has remained alien to the heart of the people in all strata, and republican protective laws may deter people from transgressing against republican institutions, but can never win the love of so much as a single German. In this excessive concern with protecting the Republic against its own citizens by means of penal laws and imprisonment lies the most annihilating criticism and disparagement of the whole institution itself.

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But for another reason as well, the assertion, made by certain parties today, that the disappearance of satisfaction in the Reich is attributable to the encroachments of the Reich against certain sovereign rights of the provinces, is untrue. Assuming that the Reich had not undertaken the extension of its competencies, let no one suppose that the love of the individual provinces for the Reich would be any greater, if nonetheless their total contributions had to be the same as now. On the contrary: If the individual provinces today had to bear taxes to the amount which the Reich requires for the fulfillment of the slave dictates, hostility toward the Reich would be infinitely greater. Not only would the contributions of the provinces to the Reich be very hard to bring in, but they would have to be raised by means of downright coercion For since the Republic stands on the basis of the peace treaties, and possesses neither the courage nor any intention whatever of breaking them, it must reckon with its obligations. Solely to blame for this are again the parties which incessantly harangue the patient mass of the voters about the necessary independence of the provinces, but at the same time promote and support a Reich policy which must lead inevitably to the elimination of the very last of these so-called 'sovereign rights.'

I say inevitably because the present Reich retains no other possibility of meeting the burdens imposed by its notorious domestic and foreign policy. Here again one wedge drives the next, and every new debt that the Reich heaps upon itself by its criminal handling of German interests abroad, must be balanced at home by a stronger downward pressure which in turn requires the gradual elimination of all sovereign rights of the individual states, in order to prevent germ cells of resistance from arising or merely persisting in them.

Altogether, a characteristic difference must be noted between the present Reich policy and that of former days: The old Reich gave internal freedom and demonstrated strength on the outside, while the Republic shows weakness outside and represses its citizens internally. In both cases one conditions the other: The powerful national state needs fewer laws within in consequence of the greater love and attachment of its citizens; the international slave state can only hold its subjects to their slave labor by force. For it is one of the present r¨¦gime's most shameless impertinences to speak of 'free citizens.' Only the old Germany possessed such citizens. The Republic is a slave colony of foreign countries and has no citizens, but at best subjects. It therefore possesses no national flag but only a trade-mark, introduced and protected by official decrees and legal measures. This symbol, regarded by everyone as the Gessler's hat of German democracy, will therefore always remain inwardly alien to our people. The Republic which, without any feeling for tradition and without much respect for the greatness of the past, trod its symbols in the mire, will some day be amazed how superficially its subjects are attached to its own symbols. It has given to itself the character of an intermezzo in German history.

And so today this state, for the sake of its own existence, is obliged to curtail the sovereign rights of the individual provinces more and more, not only out of general material considerations, but from ideal considerations as well. For in draining its citizens of their last drop of blood by its policy of financial extortion, it must inevitably withdraw their last rights if it does not want the general discontent to break out into open rebellion some day.

By inverting the above proposition, the following rule, basic for us National Socialists, is derived. A powerful national Reich, which takes into account and protects the outward interests of its citizens to the highest extent, can offer freedom within, without having to fear for the stability of the state. On the other hand, a powerful national government can undertake and accept responsibility for great limitations on the freedom of the individual as well as the provinces, without damage to the Reich idea if in such measures the individual citizen recognizes a means toward the greatness of his nation.

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Certainly all the states in the world are moving toward a certain unification in their inner organization. And in this Germany will be no exception. Today it is an absurdity to speak of a 'state sovereignty' of individual provinces, which in reality the absurd size of these formations in itself fails to provide. The techniques of communication as well as administration steadily diminish the importance of the individual states. Modern communications, modern technology, make distance and space shrink more and more. A state of former days today represents only a province' and the states of the present formerly seemed like continents. The difficulty, from the purely technical point of view, of administering a state like Germany is no greater than the difficulty in directing a province like Brandenburg a hundred and twenty years ago. It is today easier to span the distance from Munich to Berlin than that from Munich to Starnberg a hundred years ago. And the whole Reich territory of today is smaller in relation to current communications technique than any medium German federated state at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Anyone who disregards consequences resulting from undeniable facts cannot help but remain behind the times. At all times there have been men who do this, and in the future there will be too. But they can scarcely impede the wheel of history, and never bring it to a standstill.

We National Socialists must never blindly disregard the consequences of these truths. Here again we must not let ourselves be taken in by the phrases of our so-called national bourgeois parties. I use the term phrases because these parties themselves do not believe seriously in the possibility of carrying out their intentions, and because in the second place they themselves are the accomplices mainly responsible for the present development. Especially in Bavaria, the cry for the elimination of centralization is really nothing more than a party machination without any serious thought behind it. Every time that these parties should really have made something serious out of their phrases, they all of them fell down miserably. Every so-called 'theft of sovereign rights' from the Bavarian state by the Reich was accepted practically without resistance except for a repulsive yelping. Indeed, if anyone really dared to put up serious opposition to this insane system, he was outlawed and damned and persecuted for 'contempt of the existing state' by these very parties, and in the end was silenced either by imprisonment or illegally forbidden to speak. This more than anything should show our supporters the inner hypocrisy of these so-called federalistic circles. The federative state idea, like religion in part, is only an instrument for their often unclean party interests.

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Natural as a certain unification may seem, particularly in the field of communications, for us National Socialists there nevertheless remains an obligation to take an energetic position against such a development in the present-day state, at times when the measures only serve the purpose of masking and making possible a catastrophic foreign policy. Precisely because the present Reich did not undertake the nationalization of the railroads, postal service, finances, etc., out of higher considerations of national policy, but only in order to lay hands on the financial means and securities for such a policy of unlimited fulfillment, we National Socialists must do everything that seems in any way calculated to impede and if possible prevent the execution of such a policy. And to this belongs the struggle against the present centralization of vitally important institutions of our people, which is undertaken only in order to raise the billions of marks and the collateral for our post-War foreign policy.

And for this reason the National Socialist movement has taken a position against such attempts.

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The second reason which can induce us to offer resistance to such a centralization is that it might stabilize the power of a system of internal government which in all its effects has brought the gravest disaster upon the German people. The present Jewish-Democratic Reich, which has become a true curse for the German nation, seeks to make the criticism of the individual states, all of which are not yet imbued with this new spirit, ineffectual, by reducing them to total insignificance. In the face of this, we National Socialists have every reason to attempt to give to the opposition of these individual states, not only the foundation of a state power promising success, but in general to make their struggle against centralization into an expression of a higher, national and universal German interest. And so, while the Bavarian People's Party endeavors to preserve special rights for the Bavarian State out of small-hearted, particularistic motives, we must use this special position in the service of a higher national interest in opposition to the present November democracy.

The third reason that can also determine us to fight against the current centralization is the conviction that a great part of the so-called nationalization is in reality no unification, and in no event a simplification, but that in many cases it is only a matter of removing institutions from the sovereign rights of the provinces, in order to open their gates to the interests of the revolutionary parties. Never in German history has there been a more shameless policy of favoritism than under the democratic Republic. A large part of the present frenzy for centralization falls to the account of those parties which once promised to clear the road to ability, but when it came to filling offices and posts solely considered party membership. Since the founding of the Republic, particularly Jews in incredible numbers poured into the economic concerns and administrative apparatuses snatched up by the Reich, so that today both have become a domain of Jewish activity.

This third consideration above all must obligate us on tactical grounds to examine sharply any further measure on the road to centralization and if necessary to take a position against it. But in this our motives must always be higher motives of national policy and never petty particularistic ones.

This last remark is necessary lest the opinion arise among our supporters that we National Socialists would not grant the Reich as such the right to embody a higher sovereignty than that of the individual states. Concerning this right, there must and can be no doubt among us. Since for us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power. The mischief of individual federated states maintaining so-called missions abroad and among each other must cease and will some day cease. As long as such things are possible, we must not be surprised if foreign countries still doubt the stability of our Reich structure and act accordingly. The mischief of these missions is all the greater as not the least benefit can be attributed to them along with the harm. The interests of a German abroad, which cannot be protected by the ambassador of the Reich, can much less be looked after by the envoy of a petty state that looks ridiculous in the setting of the present world order. In these petty federated states we can really see nothing but points of attack for separatist endeavors inside and outside of the German Reich, endeavors such as one state still particularly welcomes. And we National Socialists can have no sympathy with some noble family, grown feeble with age, providing new soil for a withered scion by clothing him in an ambassadorial post. Our diplomatic missions abroad were so miserable even at the time of the old Reich that further additions to the experience then gained are highly superfluous.

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In future the significance of the individual provinces will unquestionably be shifted more to the field of cultural policy. The monarch who did the most for the importance of Bavaria was not some stubborn anti-German particularist, but Ludwig I, a man of pan-German mind and artistic sensibilities. By using the forces of the state primarily for the development of Bavaria's cultural position and not for the strengthening of her political power, he built better and more enduringly than would otherwise have been possible. By pushing Munich from the level of an insignificant provincial capital into the format of a great German art metropolis, he created a spiritual center which even today is strong enough to bind the essentially different Franks to this state. Supposing that Munich had remained what it formerly was, the same process that took place in Saxony would have been repeated in Bavaria, only with the difference that Nuremberg, the Bavarian Leipzig, would have become not a Bavarian but a Frankish city. It was not the 'Down with Prussia' shouters that made Munich great; this city was given its importance by the King who in it wished to bestow upon the German nation an art treasure which would have to be seen and respected, and which was seen and respected. And therein lies a lesson for the future. The importance of the individual states will in the future no longer lie in the fields of state power and policy; I see it either in the tribal field or the field of cultural policy. But even here time will have a leveling effect. The ease of modern transportation so scatters people around that slowly and steadily the tribal boundaries are effaced and thus even the cultural picture gradually begins to even out.

The army in particular must be sharply removed from all influence of the individual states. The coming National Socialist state must not fall into the error of the past and attribute to the army a function which it has not and must not have. The German army does not exist to be a school for the preservation of tribal peculiarities, but should rather be a school for the mutual understanding and adaptation of all Germans. Whatever source of division there may be in the life of the nation must be given a unifying effect by the army. Furthermore, it must raise the individual young man from the narrow horizon of his little province and put him into the German nation. He must learn to see, not the boundaries of his home province, but those of his fatherland; for it is these that he will one day have to protect. It is, therefore, senseless to leave the young German at home; the expedient thing is to show him Germany during his period of military service. Today this is all the more necessary, as the young German no longer has his years of wandering apprenticeship with their broadening effect on his horizon. In view of this, is it not preposterous to leave, when possible, the young Bavarian in Munich, the Frank in Nuremberg, the Badener in Karlsruhe, the W¨¹rttemberger in Stuttgart, etc., and is it not more sensible to show the young Bavarian the Rhine and the North Sea, the Hamburger the Alps, the East Prussian the mountains of Central Germany, and so on? Regional character should remain in the detachment, but not in the garrison. Every attempt at centralization may encounter our disapproval, but that of the army never! On the contrary, even if we welcomed no such endeavor, we should have to take pleasure in this one. Quite aside from the fact that, in view of the size of the present Reich army, the preservation of individual state troop formations would be absurd, we regard the unification of the Reich army that has taken place as a step which, in the future, when a national army has been introduced, we must never again abandon.

Moreover, a young victorious idea will have to reject any fetter which might paralyze its activity in pushing forward its conceptions. National Socialism as a matter of principle, must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated state boundaries, and to educate it in its ideas and conceptions. Just as the churches do not feel bound and limited by political boundaries, no more does the National Socialist idea feel limited by the individual state territories of our fatherland.

The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual federated states, but shall someday become the master of the German nation. It must determine and reorder the life of a people, and must, therefore, imperiously claim the right to pass over boundaries drawn by a development we have rejected.
The more complete the victory of its idea will be, the greater may be the particular liberties it offers internally.

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End of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 10: FEDERALISM AS A MASK

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Begin of
Volume 2: The National Socialist Movement
CHAPTER 11: PROPAGANDA AND ORGANIZATION

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IN SEVERAL RESPECTS THE YEAR 1921 has assumed a special significance for me and the movement.

After my entrance into the German Workers' Party, I at once took over the management of propaganda. I regarded this department as by far the most important. For the present, it was less important to rack one's brains over organizational questions than to transmit the idea itself to a larger number of people. Propaganda had to run far in advance of organization and provide it with the human material to be worked on. Moreover, I am an enemy of too rapid and too pedantic organizing. It usually produces nothing but a dead mechanism, seldom a living organization. For organization is a thing that owes its existence to organic life, organic development. Ideas which have gripped a certain number of people will always strive for a greater order, and a great value must attributed to this inner molding. Here, too, we must reckon with the weakness of men, which leads the individual, at first at least, instinctively to resist a superior mind. If an organization is mechanically ordered from above, there exists a great danger that a once appointed leader, not yet accurately evaluated and perhaps none too capable, will from jealousy strive to prevent the rise of abler elements within the movement. The harm that arises in such a case can, especially in a young movement, be of catastrophic significance..

For this reason it is more expedient for a time to disseminate an idea by propaganda from a central point and then carefully to search and examine the gradually gathering human material for leading minds. Sometimes it will turn out that men inconspicuous in themselves must nevertheless be regarded as born leaders.

But it would be absolutely mistaken to regard a wealth of theoretical knowledge as characteristic proof for the qualities and abilities of a leader.

The opposite is often the case.

The great theoreticians are only in the rarest cases great organizers, since the greatness of the theoretician and program-maker lies primarily in the recognition and establishment of abstractly correct laws, while the organizer must primarily be a psychologist. He must take people as they are and must therefore know them. He must not overestimate them, any more than he must underestimate them in the mass. On the contrary, he must endeavor to take weakness and bestiality equally into account, in order, considering all factors, to create a formation which will be a living organism, imbued with strong and stable power, and thus suited to upholding an idea and paving the way for its success.

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Even more seldom, however, is a great theoretician a great leader. Much more readily will an agitator be one, something which many who only work scientifically on the question do not want to hear. And yet that is understandable. An agitator who demonstrates the ability to transmit an idea to the broad masses must always be a psychologist, even if he were only a demagogue. Then he will still be more suited for leadership than the unworldly theoretician, who is ignorant of people. For leading means: being able to move masses. The gift of shaping ideas has nothing to do with ability as a leader. And it is quite useless to argue which is of greater importance, to set up ideals and aims for mankind, or to realize them. Here, as so often in life: one would be utterly meaningless without the other. The finest theoretical insight remains without purpose and value if the leader does not set the masses in motion toward it. And conversely, of what avail would be all the genius and energy of a leader, if the brilliant theoretician did not set up aims for the human struggle? However, the combination of theoretician, organizer, and leader in one person is the rarest thing that can be found on this earth; this combination makes the great man.

As I have already remarked, I devoted myself to propaganda in the first period of my activity in the movement. What it had to do was gradually to fill a small nucleus of men with the new doctrine, and so prepare the material which could later furnish the first elements of an organization.

When a movement harbors the purpose of tearing down a world and building another in its place, complete clarity must reign in the ranks of its own leadership with regard to the following principles:

Every movement will first have to sift the human material it wins into two large groups: supporters and members.

The function of propaganda is to attract supporters, the function of organization to win members.

A supporter of a movement is one who declares himself to be in agreement with its aims, a member is one who fights for them.

The supporter is made amenable to the movement by propaganda. The member is induced by the organization to participate personally in the recruiting of new supporters, from whom in turn members can be developed.

Since being a supporter requires only a passive recognition of an idea, while membership demands active advocacy and defense, to ten supporters there will at most be one or two members.

Being a supporter is rooted only in understanding, membership in the courage personally to advocate and disseminate what has been understood.

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Understanding in its passive form corresponds to the majority of mankind which is lazy and cowardly. Membership requires an activistic frame of mind and thus corresponds only to the minority of men.

Propaganda will consequently have to see that an idea wins supporters, while the organization must take the greatest care only to make the most valuable elements among the supporters into members. Propaganda does not, therefore, need to rack its brains with regard to the importance of every individual instructed by it, with regard to his agility, capacity, and understanding, or character, while the organization must carefully gather from the mass of these elements those which really make possible the victory of the movement.

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Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people; the organization embraces within its scope only those who do not threaten on psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination of the idea.

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Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea, while the organization achieves victory by the persistent, organic, and militant union of those supporters who seem willing and able to carry on the fight for victory.

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The victory of an idea will be possible the sooner, the more comprehensively propaganda has prepared people as a whole and the more exclusive, rigid, and firm the organization which carries out the fight in practice.

From this it results that the number of supporters cannot be too large, out that the number of members can more readily be too large than too small.

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If propaganda has imbued a whole people with an idea, the organization can draw the consequences with a handful of men. Propaganda and organization, in other words, supporters and members, thus stand in a certain mutual relation. The better the propaganda has worked, the smaller the organization can be; and the larger the number of supporters, the more modest the number of members can be; and vice versa: the poorer the propaganda is, the larger the organization must be, and the smaller the host of followers of a movement remains, the more extensive the number of its members must be, if it still hopes to count on any success at all.

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The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization; the first task of organization is to win men for the continuation of propaganda. The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of organization must be the struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success of the doctrine.

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The most striking success of a revolution based on a philosophy of life will always have been achieved when the new philosophy of life as far as possible has been taught to all men, and, if necessary, later forced upon them, while the organization of the idea, in other words, the movement, should embrace only as many as are absolutely required for occupying the nerve centers of the state in question.

This, in other words, means the following:

In every really great world-shaking movement, propaganda will first have to spread the idea of this movement. Thus, it will indefatigably attempt to make the new thought processes clear to the others, and therefore to draw them over to their own ground, or to make them uncertain of their previous conviction. Now, since the dissemination of an idea, that is, propaganda, must have a firm backbone, the doctrine will have to give itself a solid organization. The organization obtains its members from the general body of supporters won by propaganda. The latter will grow the more rapidly, the more intensively the propaganda is carried on, and the latter in turn can work better, the stronger and more powerful the organization is that stands behind it.

Hence it is the highest task of the organization to make sure that no inner disunities within the membership of the movement lead to a split and hence a weakening of the movement's work, further, that the spirit of determined attack does not die out, but is continuously renewed and reinforced. The number of members need not grow infinitely; on the contrary: since only a small fraction of mankind is by nature energetic and bold, a movement which endlessly enlarges its organization would inevitably be weakened some day as a result. Organizations, in other words, membership figures, which grow beyond a certain level gradually lose their fighting power and are no longer capable of supporting or utilizing the propaganda of an idea resolutely and aggressively.

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The greater and more essentially revolutionary an idea is, the more activistic its membership will become, since the revolutionary force of a doctrine involves a danger for its supporters, which seems calculated to keep cowardly little shopkeepers away from it. They will privately regard themselves as supporters, but decline to make a public avowal of this by membership. By virtue of this fact, the organization of a really revolutionary idea obtains as members only the most active among the supporters won over by propaganda. And precisely in this activity of a movement's membership, guaranteed by natural selection, lies the premise for equally active future propaganda as well as a successful struggle for the realization of the idea.

The greatest danger that can threaten a movement is a membership which has grown abnormally as a result of too rapid successes. For, just as a movement is shunned by all cowardly and egotistic individuals, as long as it has to fight bitterly, these same people rush with equal alacrity to acquire membership when a success of the party has been made probable or already realized by developments

To this it must be ascribed why many victorious movements, on the point of success, or, rather, the ultimate completion of their will, suddenly from inexplicable inner weakness, flag, stop fighting, and finally die out. In consequence of their first victory, so many inferior, unworthy, and worst of all cowardly, elements have entered their organization that these inferior people finally achieve predominance over the militants and then force the movement into the service of their own interests, lower it to the level of their own scanty heroism, and do nothing to complete the victory of the original idea. The fanatical zeal has been blurred, the fighting force paralyzed, or, as the bourgeois world correctly puts it in such cases: 'Water has been mixed with the wine.' And when that happens, the trees can no longer grow skyward.

It is, therefore, most necessary that a movement, for pure reasons of self-preservation, should, once it has begun to achieve success, immediately block enrollments and henceforth increase its organization only with extreme caution and after the most thorough scrutiny. Only in this way will it be able to preserve the core of the movement in unvitiated freshness and health. It must see to it that, from this point on, this core alone shall exclusively lead the movement, that is, determine the propaganda which should lead to its universal recognition, and, in full possession of the power, undertake the actions which are necessary for the practical realization of its ideas.

It must not only occupy all the important positions of the conquered territory with the basic core of the old movement, but also constitute the entire leadership. And this until the principles and doctrines of the party have become the foundation and content of the new state. Only then can the reins gradually be handed over to the special government of this state, born of its spirit. This, however, in turn occurs for the most part only in mutual struggle since it is less a question of human insight than of the play and workings of forces which can perhaps be recognized from the first, but cannot forever be guided.

All great movements, whether of a religious or a political nature, must attribute their mighty successes only to the recognition and application of these principles, and all lasting successes in particular are not even thinkable without consideration of these laws.

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As director of the party's propaganda I took much pains, not only to prepare the soil for the future greatness of the movement, but by an extremely radical conception in this work I also strove to bring it about that the party should obtain only the best material. For the more radical and inflammatory my propaganda was, the more this frightened weaklings and hesitant characters, and prevented them from penetrating the primary core of our organization. They might continue as supporters, but certainly not with loud emphasis; they timidly concealed the fact. How many thousands assured me at that time that they were essentially in agreement with everything we said, but that under no circumstances could they become members. The movement, they said, was so radical that membership in it would expose the individual to the gravest difficulties, nay, dangers, and we shouldn't take it amiss if the honest, peaceable citizen should stand aside for the present at least, even if at heart he was entirely with the cause.

And this was good.

If these men, who at heart were not for the revolution, had all come into our party at that time, and as members, we could regard ourselves today as a pious fraternal organization, but no longer as a young militant movement.

The live and aggressive form that I then gave to our propaganda reinforced and guaranteed the radical tendency of our movement, since now only radical people - with some exceptions - were ready for membership.

At the same time, this propaganda had the effect that after a short while hundreds of thousands not only believed us to be right lout desired our victory, even if personally they were too cowardly to make sacrifices for it, let alone fight for it.

Up to the middle of 1921 this purely propagandist activity could still suffice and benefit the movement. But special events in the midsummer of this year made it seem indicated that now after the slowly visible success of our propaganda, the organization should be adapted to it and put on a par with it.

The attempt of a group of folkish lunatics to obtain the leadership of the party, with the aid and support of the party chairman of the time, led to the collapse of this little intrigue and, at a general membership meeting, unanimously gave me the leadership over the whole movement. Immediately, a new by-law was passed, transferring full responsibility to the first chairman of the party, eliminating committee decisions as a matter of principle, and introducing instead a system of division of labor which has since proved its worth in the most beneficial way.

Beginning on August 1, 1921, I took over this inner reorganization of the movement and in so doing found the support of a number of excellent people whom I consider it necessary to mention in a special appendix.

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In the attempt to organizationally exploit the results of propaganda and thereby establish them for all time, I had to do away with a number of previous habits and introduce principles which none of the existing parties possessed or would even have recognized.

In the years from 1919 to 1920 the movement had for leadership a committee which was chosen by membership meetings, which themselves in turn were prescribed by rule. The committee consisted of a first and second treasurer, a first and second secretary, and at the head, a first and second chairman. Added to these was a membership secretary, the propaganda chief, and various assisting committeemen.

Strange as it may seem, this committee actually embodied exactly what the party most wanted to combat, namely, parliamentarianism. For it was obvious that we were involved with a principle which from the smallest local group, through the later districts, counties, and provinces, up to the Reich leadership, embodied the very same system under which we all suffered and today still suffer.

It was urgently necessary to bring about a change in this some day, unless the movement, in consequence of the poor foundation of its inner organization, were to be forever ruined and hence incapable of ever fulfilling its high mission.

The committee sessions, of which minutes were kept, and in which votes were taken and decisions made by a majority, represented in reality a parliament on a small scale. Here, too, all personal responsibility was lacking. Here, too, the same irrationality and the same unreasonableness reigned as in our great state representative bodies. For this committee, secretaries; treasurers, membership secretaries, propaganda chiefs, and God knows what else were appointed, and then all of them together were made to deliberate on every single question and decide by vote. And so the man who was there for propaganda voted on a matter that regarded the finance man, and he in turn voted on a matter regarding organization, and the latter in turn on a matter which should only have concerned the secretary, etc.

Why they bothered to appoint a special man for propaganda, when treasurers, secretaries, membership secretaries, etc., had to decide on questions regarding it, seems just as incomprehensible to a healthy mind as it would be incomprehensible if in a big industrial enterprise the directors or engineers of other departments and other branches had to decide on questions having nothing to do with their affairs.

I did not submit to this lunacy, but after a short time stayed away from the sessions. I did my propaganda work and let it go at that, and I did not stand for any incompetent trying to tell me what to do in this field. Just as, conversely, I did not interfere in the business of the others.

When the acceptance of the new statutes and my appointment to the position of first chairman had meanwhile given me the necessary authority and the rights that went with it, this nonsense immediately stopped. In the place of committee decisions, the principle of absolute responsibility was introduced.

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The first chairman is responsible for the total leadership of the movement. He apportions the work to be performed among the committeemen subordinated to him and among whatever other collaborators are needed. And each one of these gentlemen is absolutely responsible for the tasks transferred to him. He is subordinated only to the first chairman, who must procure the cooperation of all, or else must bring about this cooperation by the choice of persons and the issuance of general directives.

This law of fundamental responsibility was gradually taken for granted within the movement, at least in so far as the party leadership was concerned. In the little local groups and perhaps even in the counties and districts, it will take years before these principles will be forced through, since scare-cats and incompetents will of course always fight against it; to them sole responsibility for an undertaking will always be unpleasant; they always felt freer and better when in every grave decision they were covered by the majority of a so-called committee. But to me it seems necessary to express myself with the greatest sharpness against such an attitude, to make no concession to cowardice in the face of responsibility, and thereby, even if it takes a long time, to achieve a conception of leader's duty and leader's ability, which will bring to leadership exclusively those who are really called and chosen for it.

In any case a movement that wants to combat the parliamentary madness must itself be free of it. Only on such a basis can it win the strength for its struggle.

A movement which in a time of majority rule orients itself in all things on the principle of the leader idea and the responsibility conditioned by it will some day with mathematical certainty overcome the existing state of affairs and emerge victorious.

This idea led to a complete reorganization within the movement. And in its logical effects also to an extremely sharp division between the business activities of the movement and the general political leadership. As a matter of principle, the idea of responsibility was extended to all the party activities and led inevitably to their recovery, in exact proportion as they were freed from political influences and adjusted to purely economic considerations.

When in the fall of 1919, I joined the handful of men who then constituted the party, it had neither a business office nor a clerk, not even forms or rubber stamps; and no printed matter existed. The committee room was first a tavern in the Herrengasse, and later a caf?on the Gasteig. That was an impossible state of affairs. Soon afterward I started out and visited a number of Munich restaurants and taverns with the intention of renting a back room or some other space for the party. In the former Sterneckerbräu in the Tal, there was a small vault-like room which had once served the imperial councilors of Bavaria as a sort of taproom. It was dark and gloomy and thus was just as well suited for its former purpose as it was ill-suited for its projected new use. The alley on which its single window opened was so narrow that even on the brightest summer day the room remained gloomy and dark. This became our first business office. But since the monthly rent was only fifty marks (then an exorbitant sum for us!), we could make no greater demands and were not even in a position to complain when, before we moved in, the wall paneling, formerly intended for the imperial councilors, was quickly torn out, so that now the room really gave more the impression of a funeral vault than of an office.

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And yet this was an immense step forward. Slowly we obtained electric light, even more slowly a telephone; a table and a few borrowed chairs were brought in, finally an open book-stand, still somewhat later a cupboard; two sideboards belonging to the landlord served for keeping pamphlets, posters, etc.

The previous system - that is, having the movement run by a committee session taking place once a week - was impossible in the long run. Only an official paid by the movement could guarantee the day-to-day business organization.

At the time that was very difficult. The movement still had so few members that it took great skill to find among them a suitable man who, making the smallest demands for his own person, could satisfy the innumerable demands of the movement.

In the person of a soldier, named Schüssler, one of my former comrades, the first business manager of the party was found. At first he came to our new office only daily from six to eight o'clock, later from five to eight, finally every afternoon, and shortly afterward he was taken on full time and served from morning until late into the night. He was a man as conscientious as he was upright and absolutely honest, who personally took the greatest pains and was devoted with especial loyalty to the movement itself. Schüssler brought with him a small Adler typewriter that belonged to him. It was the first such instrument in the service of our movement. Later the party acquired it by installment payments. A small safe seemed necessary to safeguard the card index and the membership books from thieves. We did not acquire it in order to deposit any large sums of money we might have had at the time. On the contrary, everything was extremely threadbare, and often I contributed from my own small savings.

A year and a half later, the business office was too small, and we moved into a new place in the Corneliusstrasse. Again it was a tavern we moved to, but now we no longer possessed only a single room, but three rooms and one large additional room with a wicket-window. At the time that seemed to us like a good deal. Here we remained until November, 1923.

In December, 1920, we acquired the Völkischer Beobachter. This paper, which, as its name indicates, stood on the whole for folkish interests even then, was now to be transformed into the organ of the NSDAP. At first it appeared twice a week, at the beginning of 1923 became a daily, and at the end of August, 1923, it received its large format which later became well known.

As a total novice in the field of journalism, I sometimes had to pay dearly for my experience in those days.

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