Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 2

by Adolf Hitler

Chapter II

Vienna—Years of Study and Struggle

During the last months of my Mother’s life I went to Vienna to take the entrance examination to the Academy. I took along many drawings, convinced that I would easily pass the test.

This was my second visit to Vienna—once when fifteen I had spent two weeks vacation there—and now I was excited again by the magnificent parliament building, and by the Ringstrasse which was to me like a fairy tale of the Arabian Nights.

Proud and confident I awaited the result of the entrance examination: then announcement of my failure struck me like a bolt from the blue. The director told me my drawings showed lack of ability to paint, but that I obviously belonged in the school of architecture.

For the first time in my life I was dissatisfied with myself, but in a few days I knew I would one day be an architect.

After my Mother’s death I went to Vienna again, for a third time, now to remain for many years; once again I was calm and confident—my goal burned before my eyes. No obstacles could prevent me from becoming an architect.

“… Now I Am Able
To Be Hard”

Now I look upon what I had once considered the cruelty of fate as the wisdom of providence. The Goddess of Misery threatened to crush me in her arms, but the will to resist grew, and this will was finally victorious. I owe it to this that I learned to be hard, and that now I am able to be hard. I rejoice that the Goddess of Misery became my new mother, pitching me into the world of poverty—so making me acquainted with those for whom I was later to fight.

Vienna still awakens only sad thoughts in my brain. The city means to me five years of sorrow and wretchedness. For five years I struggled for bread—and sometimes went hungry—first as a worker, then as a small painter.

(Hitler spent most of these five years painting houses, although eventually some of his sketches were sold.)

I attended opera whenever I had saved enough money, and books were my only other joy. I read endlessly. In a few years I had constructed a knowledge which feeds me even today.

More than this, I at this time formed an image of world and life which became the unwavering guide for all my actions. I have added little to what I learned then, and there has been no need to change a single thing. To-day I believe that almost all creative ideas appear in youth, if ever. Plans for the future are formed in youth; maturity seizes upon them and carries them out.

The surroundings of my childhood were Bourgeoisie, so at first I knew little of the working classes. Both of these classes are little favored by economic conditions, but the chasm between the two is nevertheless gigantic; the Bourgeoisie which has so recently climbed above the hand workers is terrified at the thought of tumbling back into that class, or of being considered of that class. The Bourgeoisie memory of the misery suffered by people in the manual labor class is unbearable. It is because of this that people of the still higher social classes frequently are closer to the humblest of their fellow beings than it is possible for the Bourgeoisie to be.

The Bitter Struggle
For Bread

Fate helped me in this respect, driving me back into the lower world of miserable poverty: the blindness of Bourgeoisie education was struck from my eyes. Only now did I come to know mankind, and to distinguish between the hollow sham or brutal exterior of human men and their inner nature.

Vienna was at this time socially ill. Gaudy wealth and horrible poverty mingled in deep contrast. Countless unemployed loafed before palaces of the Ringstrasse, and below the bridges in the filthy canals and sewers dwelt the homeless.

No other German city provided better opportunity to study social conditions—a study which must, of course, not be carried out from above. Those who attempt social work from above foolishly expect gratitude—but such people should not distribute favors but instead must restore rights.

The chance of failing to earn one’s daily bread seemed to me—occasionally hungry—one of the blackest aspects of the new life. I found it not very difficult to secure work as an unskilled laborer, but I found that such readily obtained occupations are just as easily lost. The skilled worker is not so easily dismissed, yet even he is not safe. It is seldom that he loses his income—or his daily bread—because of a shortage of work, but often he is locked out, or he strikes.

(Hitler’s lumping strikes and lockouts together here, as from the workers’ viewpoint, is typical of whatever few economic theories he has put forth. Admittedly, he has never troubled himself over economics, and this is demonstrated by the constant shifting and substituting of economic leaders and theorists in the Nazi State which Hitler has created.)

I grew to hate the metropolis which greedily sucked men in from the fields, only cruelly to tear them to pieces in its maelstrom. When they came they belonged to the nation; if they stayed long, they were lost to the nation. I, myself, knocked about in the metropolis, felt this deeply, spiritually.

Sad were the housing conditions. I shudder to think of the filthy, stinking refuse-filled shelters of the unskilled Viennese worker.

(No European city could boast finer, more modern workers’ flats than those erected in Vienna by the Social Democrats, whom Hitler hated.)

Thankful I am to the Providence which sent the to that school! I could not destroy what I detested there, but I was educated rapidly and completely.

Preservation From
Sentimentality

The people in this dirt and decay were no longer human beings, but the sad products of deplorable affairs. But my own battle for life preserved me from falling into pitying sentimentality for these people.

I saw that only a single path could lead to bettering of such conditions: a deep feeling of responsibility for the establishment of stronger foundations for development, united with brutal determination to destroy such social cancers.

Nature concentrates on breeding the next generation, not on aiding that generation which exists; humans must do the same. And only when a race no longer worries as to its own guilt will it be possible for it to apply the correct, ruthless means against the diseases destroying the state.

The Austrian state lacked all social legislation and justice. Its weaknesses glared malignantly.

I do not know what horrified me most at this period of my life: the economic plight of my companions, their moral coarseness, or their slight intellectual development.

How often our Bourgeoisie leaps up indignant when some wretched tramp says he doesn’t care whether he is a German or not, that he feels at home anywhere as long as he eats!

“A state was never founded by peaceful economy, only and always by the instinct of race preservation, and by heroics, or by cunning.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter IV

This lack of “national pride” is deeply deplored. Horror is expressed at such sentiments.

But how many of these Bourgeoisie ask why they themselves think differently?

How many realize now much national pride depends upon knowledge of national greatness?

Do not our Bourgeoisie realize how little this pride is available to the “people”?

It is an unacceptable excuse to say: “It is just the same in all the other countries.” This is not true, and even if it were, it would be no excuse. The French child is not taught objectively; instead, subjectively. France’s great “civilization” is beaten into his impressive young head.

Education should be confined to broad general views, which, if necessary, must be drummed into the minds and feelings of the people by perpetual repetition.

But no, at the age of fourteen when our lad skips forth from school it is impossible to tell which is the worse: his amazing stupidity as far as knowledge and ability go, or his biting insolence combined with immorality which—considering his age—makes one’s hair stand on end.

Creed of Hate

“The masses can only be captured by a ruthless and fanatic one-sided presentation of our nationalistic idea.

The dynamic force which has made the most important changes in history has always been—no scientific intellect—but rather a fanatic feeling of hysteria which has hurled the masses in one direction.

To win the soul of the people, it is not enough merely to fight for one’s own end—one must at the same time destroy the upholders of the opposite cause.

A savage attack upon some adversary is proof to the people of the justice of their own cause.

The masses feel that if their leaders refrain from destroying an opponent, this must be a sign of uncertainty of their own cause—if not a sign that the cause is unjust.

The masses are only a fragment of nature, and their feelings cannot understand a handicap between men who proclaim opposite views. What they want is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation of the weaker, or else his unconditional enslavement.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter XII

As my knowledge flowered a new world unfolded before my eyes.

I no longer was forced to earn my dally bread as a common laborer in 1909-10. I worked independently as a draftsman and a painter of water colors. My earnings were small, but I was master of my own time. I had more time to read, and besides, I was continually immersed in thoughts of my own.

I suppose my acquaintances considered me an odd sort.

All this time, learning about music and other arts, I was most of all convinced that I would one day be a famous architect.

“Even as a boy I was no pacifist, and all attempts to train me in this direction were utter failures.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter V

My great interest in politics I deemed merely the ordinary duty of every intelligent individual, so I read and learned a lot about this. But I do not mean that I read only in order to possess wide, little-organized knowledge. This only creates a muddle in a foolishly vain mind. One who masters the art of reading—whether it be book, magazine, or pamphlet—simply picks out that which he believes suitable because it fits a specific purpose or is generally worth knowing. Only in this way is reading of any use. Otherwise it is senseless. A public speaker for example, who has not stuffed his head with all manner of support for his ideas, will be without sufficient support from his memory in case of contradiction or argument.

Escape From
Marxism

I have always, from earliest youth, read in the correct manner, and I have been helped in the most pleasing way by my memory and understanding.

In the misery of Vienna daily experience enabled me to examine theory in the light of reality, and so I was not suffocated by my wide thinking and reading.

Who knows when I would have come to studying Marxism if at this time my nose had not been thrust into this problem!

At the age of 17 I had scarcely heard the word “Marxism”, and I thought “Socialism” and “Democracy” were identical. Until that time I knew of the Social Democratic Party only because I had attended a few mass meetings, at which I gained no insight into the mentality of its followers or the meaning of its doctrine. But in Vienna I came into rapid contact with people of this sort, and soon knew that this “Social Democracy” idea was a pestilence hiding behind a mask of social virtue and love of humanity—a pestilence that, unless it was driven from the world, would destroy mankind.

I was employed on a construction job when I first really encountered the Social Democrats. I was asked to join the union; I knew nothing of unions and I refused. I said I wanted a little time to investigate the whole affair, and so they consented to wait a few days.

After two weeks of study, no power on earth could have forced me to have anything whatever to do with them.

At lunch as I drank my bottle of milk and ate my piece of bread, I listened to the workers talk. They were against everything.

The nation was an invention of the capitalistic classes … The Fatherland was a weapon of the Bourgeoisie to exploit the workers … The law was intended to suppress the proletariat … The school was to create slaves … Religion was to dope the people … Morality was only a symbol of sheep-like patience …

“Are These
Human Beings?”

I strove to keep quiet, but I could not hold myself back. I began to contradict. Of course refusing to join the union, I argued and argued against them until one day they adopted that one means which most easily vanquishes reason: terrorism and violence. I was warned that I must either leave the job at once, or I would be thrown off the scaffolding. Since I was alone and resistance seemed hopeless, I quit my job.

I went away disgusted, my head throbbing with the question: are these human beings, worthy of being part of a great race?

One day soon after this I watched with horror as endless columns of Viennese workers marched through the streets in a mass demonstration. For almost two hours I stood transfixed staring at this huge serpent twisting through the city. On the way home, for the first time I bought a copy of one of the Social Democratic newspapers; and in the evening I read it through, fighting down with difficulty the overpowering rage that arose in me in the face of the mass of lies.

Only a fool, understanding the hypocrisy of this poison, would condemn the victim. Now I understand the candid orders that only Red newspapers be subscribed to, only Red Meetings be attended, only Red books be read.

Thus I learned that the soul of the masses will not accept weak or half measures.

Just like a woman, influenced less by reasoning than by longing for strength, would rather submit to the powerful man than dominate the weak one, so do the masses love the Commander more than the petitioner. The masses are more satisfied with a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by freedom of choice.

The value of physical terror, against the individual and aganst the masses, now was revealed to me.

It was the terrorist instrument of the trade union which turned the idea of Democracy into a ridiculous and disgusting phrase. They outraged liberty and mocked fraternity with the cry:

“Join with us or we’ll break your skull”.

Thus I came to know these friends of mankind.

Hitler Discovers
The Jew

Meanwhile I had come to understand the relation between the doctrine of destruction and the nature of a race of which I had hitherto been unaware.

An understanding of Jewry is the sole key to a grasp of the hidden, real intention of Social Democracy.

To know this race is to lift the veil of false understanding, and then from the mist of social talk rises, grinning, the ape-like face of Marxism.

Today I find it difficult to say when the word “Jew” first provoked special thought in my head. I do not remember ever hearing it at home. At school I knew one Jewish boy whom we treated with caution, but this was only because his aloofness made us distrustful of him. Neither I, nor the other boys, had any real thoughts on the matter. I encountered the word “Jew” more frequently when I was fourteen or fifteen, generally in political discussions. Only a few Jews lived in Linz. After centuries they seemed outwardly European and human; I even thought that they were Germans.

(After the Nazi regime came into power in Germany, Goebbels declared: “Our critics are degenerates! Some even say the Jew is a human being!”)

The insanity of this notion was not clear to me, for the only distinguishing mark I perceived was the religion. That Jews had been persecuted solely because of their religion, as I supposed, made me dislike hearing hostile remarks about them.

I did not dream that there was such a thing as organized warfare against the Jews.

Then I went to Vienna.

“… Because of My
Human Tolerance”

At that time Vienna had nearly 200,000 Jews among 2,000,000 inhabitants, but I did not see these Jews. Soon I was conscious of anti-Semitism, but, because of my human tolerance, I refused to join the movement, which I thought was based upon religious grounds.

I was depressed by the memory of certain events in the middle ages which I hoped never would be repeated.

When I first came to Vienna I eagerly read the “world press”, but I soon found myself antagonized by the inevitable blind daily worship of the House of Hapsburg. I thought that Democracy was violated by this courting of the powerful. Meanwhile, of course, proudly comparing the growing strength of the German Reich with the decline of the Austrian State, I saw in Wilhelm II not only the German Emperor but the great creator of the German fleet. It maddened me that the Viennese press, while bending the knee to the smallest local court followers, openly attacked the German Kaiser.

This made the blood rush to my head.

More, the asinine press praise for France annoyed me. Compared to the way the French were talked of, one could only feel ashamed of the Germans.

Finally, I dropped such people and turned to the Volksblatt, a smaller, but cleaner newspaper and with which I seemed much more in accord. I disagreed with its anti-Semitism, but occasional arguments expressed in the Volksblatt made me think.

This led me to knowledge of the man and the movement which then ruled Vienna’s destiny—Doctor Karl Lueger of the Christian Social Party. When I came to Vienna I disliked both, considering the man and the movement “reactionary”, but my customary sense of justice allowed me to alter this opinion and now I consider this man the greatest German Mayor of all times.

(Lueger, a violent anti-Semite, founded the Christian Socialist Party to which Kurt von Schusschnigg, last Chancellor of independent Austria, belonged. When Hitler annexed Austria in March, 1938, Kurt von Schusschnigg was imprisoned in a hotel room, where he was doped with scopalamine and otherwise mistreated. He is still held prisoner by the Nazis.)

As I came to sympathize with the Christian Socialist Movement, my opinions regarding anti-Semitism changed. This radical change was my most severe spiritual struggle, and only after months of torturous debate between reason and feeling did victory finally fall to reason. Within two years feeling followed reason completely, and from then on was its most faithful guide in this matter.

One day as I walked through the streets of Vienna I abruptly encountered a figure clad in a long kaftan, with black curls. My first thought was:

“Is that a Jew?”

Secretly, I stared at the man, and as the strange face impressed itself upon my brain, feature by feature, my question changed form:

“Is that a German?”

According to my custom, I strove to end my doubts through books. For the first time I bought some anti-Semitic pamphlets. But they were such that I suffered again from my doubts, for the anti-Semitic assertions were supported only by shallow and unscientific arguments.

I then suffered relapses for weeks—even for months. The matter seemed so monstrous; the accusations were so overwhelming, that through fear of injustice I was uncertain.

However, even I could no longer doubt that these were not Germans with an odd religion, but a separate race. Now wherever I went I saw Jews, and soon I could easily tell them from other people.

My vacillation was finally ended by the Jews themselves. A great movement amongst them, a movement widely represented in Vienna, was determined to affirm the character of Jewry as a people: the Zionists.

Soon I discovered that the apparent quarrel among the Zionist Jews and non-Zionist Jews was entirely unreal, based on lies. The inner oneness of the race was not disturbed; this fraud disgusted me. The impurity of this race was still another thing—they were drunkards. After a time I was often nauseated by the smell of the Jew; also there was their unclean clothing and most unheroic appearance.

“We must train the German people from childhood only—absolutely exclusively—to recognize the rights of their own nationality.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter III

Much more revolting than this was the moral uncleanliness of the chosen people. Was there any offal, any form of profligacy, especially in cultural life, in which there was not found some Jew? This was devouring disease, everywhere infecting the people, worse than the Black Death of ancient times, and in what quantities this virus was produced and distributed!

It was not to be denied that nine-tenths of all the literary dirt, artistic rubbish, and theatrical nuisance was conceived by a race constituting scarcely a hundredth of the population; the press, too, was thus poisoned.

“How My Indignation
Blazed!”

The Vienna streets offered especially lucid and ugly lessons. Nowhere else an western Europe was the relationship between Jewry and prostitution—and also the white slave traffic—so evident, unless in the French seaport towns of the Mediterranean. Walking through the streets and alleys of Leopoldstadt at night, with every step one witnessed atrocious sights.

I shuddered, when, for the first time, I recognized the Jew as the shameless manager—profiteer of this vice. Then how my indignation blazed!

Now I no longer avoided talking of the Jews. No! Now I sought it. I learned to search for the Jew, everywhere, and suddenly I stumbled over him where I had been blindest of all.

The Jew was the leader of social democracy!—the scales dropped from my eyes, my long internal struggle was ended.

While rubbing elbows daily with my worker comrades, I was struck by their ever-changing opinions upon all subjects. One day they were convinced, the next day they had forgotten. The third day they presented some new idea. Madly, their opinions swung back and forth like a perpetual pendulum.

I could understand that they were dissatisfied with their lot. I could understand that they demonstrated in the streets against their miserable conditions. But what I could not understand was their limitless hate for their own people. I was constantly amazed at the way they despised their nation’s grandeur, defiled its history, and threw mud at its heroes.

The Naxi Political Testament

“The political testament of the German nation, with regard to relations with other nations, should forever be:

Never tolerate two powers on the European continent. It is the duty of the German state never to permit a power to be created on any German frontier, to use force if necessary to prevent this, and to smash with armed force any such power ever actually constructed. The power of Germany must be based upon European territory, and not upon colonies. The Reich must never be considered secure unless it can guarantee for centuries to come sufficient soil to every single citizen. The holiest right on this earth is that of tilling one’s own soil, and the holiest sacrifice is the blood one sheds for that soil.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter XXVI

The fight against their own race, against their own homeland, was senseless, unnatural.

It was some time after I came to see that the Social Democratic press was headed primarily by Jews, that I was struck with the realization that not one paper employing Jews was truly nationalistic. My hate of Jewry was intensified.

I bought pamphlets, traced names, and found that most of the leaders of Austria—from representatives in the Government to street agitators—were Jews. I found that the Social Democratic Party with which I had fought so bitterly over the union question, was almost exclusively in the hands of an alien race.

(Official Austrian Government statistics disprove these statements).

I rejoiced in the realization that the Jew was no German. Now I knew the seducers of my race.

For a time I was childish enough to try to warn Jews of the madness of their doctrines. I talked until my tongue was tied, and my throat cracked, thinking I could convince the Jews of the destructive nature of their Marxist theory. But seemingly realization of the destructive destiny of social democratic theories served only to increase the determination of these people.

“I Became a
Fanatical Anti-Semite”

As I argued, I came to know their ways. They depended upon the ignorance of their opponents; if they failed that way, they themselves pretended stupidity. Sometimes they would succumb to my arguments, before witnesses, only to deny this at the next moment when the witnesses were gone. The Jew never remembered a defeat in an argument from one day to the next. Often I was paralyzed. I did not know which to admire the more, their fluency or their more startling lies. I began to hate them. All this had one good result: as the supporters of Social Democracy attracted my abhorence, my love for my own people grew. Knowing the wiles of these seducers, who would condemn the poor victim?

I became a fanatical anti-Semite.

Only once more—for the last time—I was tortured by anxious thoughts, I wondered if perhaps inscrutable Fate had not inalterably decreed final victory for this race.

Fate gave me the answer.

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of nature, setting mass, numbers, and weight against the eternal privilege of strength and power. It denies the individual, denounces the significance of race and nation, and so cuts off mankind from all assumption of civilization. This would destroy all order. Humanity would disappear with Jewish conquest of this world, which would then, devoid of all mankind, spin through the ether just as it did thousands of years ago.

Eternal nature revenges violations of her laws.

Thus, I believe, today I am working in the spirit of the Almighty Creator by fighting the Jew: I fight for the Lord’s work.

“There is no principle so wrong as the parliamentary principle.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter III