Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 23
Chapter XXIII
Propaganda and Organization
Propaganda must march far ahead of an organization in order to conquer the necessary human material—I am an enemy not only of too scholarly but of too rapid organizing.
The organization required to put into execution an idea must evolve slowly and only after the idea itself has won support of a considerable number of people. Only by following the course of a more or less natural organic growth, in step with the development of the idea, will the organization take on the most suitable form.
Definition
Of a Leader
When an organization is mechanically constructed from above, there is great danger that some individual, once appointed leader, will for reasons of jealousy try to keep more able individuals from gaining any power. The real leader may not easily be recognized at first, and obstacles such as this should not be allowed to arise in his path.
Thus an idea should be widely spread about with the use of propaganda, and the search for the Leader should by all means consider these new believers as potentially eligible for this most exalted position.
Men from insignificant walks of life quite often turn out to be natural-born leaders.
It is positively wrong to think that a leader must have great theoretical knowledge.
The opposite is quite often the case.
A theorist is very seldom an organizer; an organizer must be above all a psychologist.
- (Psychologists often present these four statements—and the one which follows this note—as evidence of the famous Hitler inferiority complex, which goads him into his assertive acts of violence.)
The organizer must not over-estimate the masses of people; he must know their weakness and bestiality, and must be able to convince them of the truth of an idea, even if to do this he must be a demagogue.
To lead the masses one must be able to move the masses.
It would be a waste of time to stop to discuss which is more important, to create ideas, or to carry them out. One would be worth nothing without the other. How could a leader be worth anything if no creator lived before him, or at the same time?
The combination of theorist and leader is the rarest thing on this earth—the combination results in a really great man.
Propaganda Convinces—
Then Organization Acts
Every movement must use propaganda to attract followers, and organization to get members.
There will always be about ten followers of a movement, to every two actual members of the organization—for the follower must merely agree with a movement, while the member must actively serve it. The ten followers represent, in a way, the great majority of mankind, which is lazy and cowardly; the two members correspond to the active minority which always leads the world. Thus propaganda must always be out to win followers, but the organization must scrupulously restrict membership.
Propaganda strives to force an idea upon people, but the organization itself must include only those whose intellectual talents do not make them a barrier standing in the way of actual realization of ends.
Propaganda prepares the way for the victory of an idea in a community of men—the organization achieves this victory.
The followers of an idea cannot be too great in number, but the members of the fighting organization can much more easily be too many than too few.
The supreme danger which an organization faces is that early successes may create too large an early membership, for in this way weaklings get inside where later they can destroy the power of the entire movement.
This explains why so often new movements apparently destined for brilliant success suddenly wither and die away. As the Bourgeois world usually says, and in this particular case it would be correct: “The wine has been spoilt with water”.
The first task of propaganda is to win followers of the movement who are eventually to become members of the organization; the second task is to prepare the collapse of existing conditions. The first task of the organization is to unite people for the continuance and the spread of propaganda; the second task of the organization is the battle for power which insures the final victory of the idea.
All great movements, religious and political, owe their successes only to the understanding and the use of these principles, and lasting victories are impossible without them.
As the leader of party propaganda, I from the very first endeavored to scare away weaklings with my radical and inflammatory propaganda. I did not want them. If, at first, they nevertheless became followers of the movement they were the type who would nervously conceal the fact—in those days.
Thousands assured me then that they completely agreed with us—but that they could under no circumstances join the movement!
And that was fine.
The live, reckless form which I gave to our propaganda strengthened our movement since only vigorous people—with a few exceptions—were willing to join.
Yet this propaganda in a short time won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people who desired our victory even though they were too cowardly to stand up for the cause.
Hitler Becomes
Nazi Führer
In the middle of the year 1921 certain events made it apparent that the time had come when the organization should take on the nature of the propaganda. A plot of a group of racial “visionaries” to grasp the leadership of the party failed, and in a general meeting I was unanimously chosen Leader.
Along with this action, new articles were adopted by the party granting absolute responsibility to the Leader, and this subsequently proved to be a great boon.
In August, 1921, I reorganized the entire movement from the inside, as the new Leader. Oddly enough, the various committees were based upon the very parliamentary weaknesses which we were opposing, and a change was necessary unless the entire idea was not ultimately to be wrecked because of this.
Formerly I had been so irritated by these committees that I refused to pay any attention to them or to attend meetings, and carried on my work in my special realm of propaganda without allowing any committee decisions or inferior people to tell me what I should or should not do.
Now I changed the entire system, abolishing committee decisions and setting up the rule of complete responsibility; committees now existed to share and carry out work, and to serve in an advisory capacity. The chairman of each committee ruled it.
A movement which during a period of majority rule pays no attention to that system, but instead devotes itself to the development of the Leader idea, will one day overthrow the old set-up and take command—with mathematical certainty.
When I joined the party in the fall of 1919, the impoverished group used to meet in a dingy tavern in the Herrengasse; later the meeting place became a cafe on the Gasteig. This place was intolerable, so one day I set out to find better headquarters. I visited many of Munich’s restaurants and inns, and finally took a room in the Sterneckerbrau in the Tal—it was very small and dark, and the street the room overlooked was never bright, but the rent was only fifty marks.
“It is positively wrong to think that a leader must have great theoretical knowledge.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter XXIII
Gradually we acquired electric light and finally a telephone; we managed to get a table and rented a few chairs, added a shelf, and then a cabinet. Finally we had enough things of value to prompt purchase of a safe.
So we grew. Finally we needed a business manager, and appointed an old friend of mine, Herr Schüssler. He started in working only two hours every day, but after a short time he was doing full time. Schüssler brought with him a typewriter, which we eventually bought.
After a year and a half we were cramped, and now moved over to the Cornelius Strasse, into another inn. There we stayed until November, 1923.
We took over the Völkischer Beobachter in December, 1920, a paper which, living up to its name, advocated racial purity; we made it the official organ of the Nazi party. At first it was published twice a week. Early in 1923 it became a daily, and in August, 1923, it greatly increased in size.
I in those days knew utterly nothing about the newspaper business, and for a time the consequences were rather unpleasant. However, I was fortunate in getting an excellent business manager for the newspaper who was of great aid to me; up in the front lines in 1914 I had come to know the man who is now business manager of our party, Max Amann—he was in those days my superior. Through the four war years I was able to watch and admire his ability. I first called upon Amann for help in the summer of 1921, when I became very dissatisfied with many of the employees of the party; after some hesitation he consented to become our business manager, if he could do so with the understanding that I was to be his only master. He brought discipline into the business affairs of the party.
In the early period of my leadership, I insisted that the movement should everywhere seek out the best officials, administrators and leaders, and that they should be given absolute authority in their own domain—of course, subject to orders from above. This system is now accepted throughout the movement, at least by those possessing high authority.
The results of this were shown in late 1923. I have remarked that when I joined the party four years before, I could not even find a rubber stamp. On November 9, 1923, the party was dissolved and all property confiscated. The wealth of the organization then totalled above 170,000 gold marks.