Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 3

by Adolf Hitler

Chapter III

Political Thoughts of My Vienna Days

It is my belief to-day that a man should never actively take part in politics before he is thirty, unless he has extraordinary ability.

The leader who is forced to abandon the platform of his general world view because he found it in error, acts honorably only if he for all future times relinquishes all further public political activity. Since he has already once been basically mistaken, the possibility of a second mistake is obvious. He has no right to continue to assume or demand the confidence of his fellow people.

(Hitler has made several important changes in his fundamental program, one of the most important occurring in March, 1939. On the very first page of Mein Kampf, and repeatedly throughout the book, Hitler emphasizes the idea, “One People, One Nation, One Leader.” He has repeatedly said that not until all Germans are in a common German state will Germany have the “moral right” to foreign conquest. Yet in March, 1939, Hitler annexed millions of completely racially unrelated Czechs and Slovaks. Poles, Rumanians, Hungarians and others tremble lest this, too, be forcibly incorporated within Hitler’s Germany.)

(Has Hitler, then, been “forced to abandon the platform of his general world view”? And should he not “for all future times relinquish all further public political activity”?)

I for a long time refrained from public appearances and talked of politics only in the most limited circles. I thus gained much insight into the incredibly primitive ideas and motives of the masses. Thus I trained myself.

The political memory of the various nations making up the Austrian State was almost entirely lacking for a long time, but now, as the various countries developed popular forces, the control of these forces became ever more difficult, as states took form on the frontier of the monarchy whose people were related to the different individual Austrian national splinters.

Vienna, faced with the development of Budapest as the capitol for the Hungarians, came to know a dangerous rival.

Soon Prague was to follow this example, then Lemberg, then Laibach, etc.

As these provincial towns tended more and more to become national capitols of individual countries, so also did they become centers for diverse cultures, Only thus—through these cultures—could the movements find spiritual depth.

The time would inevitably come when the forces of these different nationalities would be greater than the force of their common interest—then Austria would die.

If the war for the preservation of the greater state was to be waged at all, a ruthless and ceaseless centralization was the only weapon worth using. A uniform state language would have to be imposed.

Those guilty of this omission were guilty of the collapse of the Austrian Empire.

(If the Czechs and Slovaks know their Mein Kampf, how, in the light of these remarks, can they even consider the promise Hitler made, immediately after their conquest in March, 1939, to preserve their cultural ways and liberties within the Nazi Reich?)

Among the institutions which might have revealed to the Bourgeoisie the decay of the Austrian Empire was parliament. This blissful arrangement was transplanted, of course, from London to Vienna, with as little change as possible—up to and including the architecture of the physical building. Thus in Vienna after a mixture of Roman and Greek decorations there arose two houses above which, with symbolic irony, the four-horse chariots pulled away from each other toward the four parts of the globe—a perfect representation of what was going on inside.

“… As a Lover of
Freedom”

I was not yet twenty when I first attended a meeting of the Chamber of Deputies in Vienna. I always had hated this parliament, but not yet as an institution. Instead, as a lover of freedom, I could imagine no other possible form of government. The House of Hapsburg being what it was, I would have believed any form of dictatorship a crime against liberty and reason.

I was an enemy of the Austrian parliament chiefly because I thought it such a miserable imitation of the British parliament, which at that time, unconsciously, I admired very much.

The destiny of the German race in the Austrian State depended entirely upon its position in Parliament. With the introduction of general suffrage, the German majority was destroyed—and thus there was no longer any legal way to oppose the de-Germanization of the State. It was because of this that my racial instinct of self-preservation could not inspire me with any love for a representative body in which German interests were betrayed instead of represented. I still believed that the reestablishment of the German majority would end my bitter objections to the Austrian parliament.

All this whirled in my mind as for the first time I entered the building. How immediately I was outraged at the wretched comedy occuring before my very eyes! Several hundred of these representatives were present. Some of the gentlemen did not even speak German, but instead their Slavic mother tongues or rather dialects! It was a gesticulating mass in frantic turmoil, shrieking and interrupting in every pitch of voice, while in its midst a hopeless old duffer strove to restore dignity in the House by shaking a bell and remonstrating most reservedly. I could not help laughing.

A few weeks later I decided to visit the house again. I found the hall almost empty. A few people were lounging about, others yawning, while some other gentleman spoke. Some were actually asleep, snoring.

Against Parliament
And Hapsburgs

I suffered my first real doubts. Now I went there repeatedly, watched and listened, and slowly formed my opinions. In a year I discarded all my former ideas. Now I did not simply object to this particular Austrian brand of parliament: I could no longer accept parliament.

I went on from here to the study of the democratic principle of decision by a majority, also investigating the spiritual and moral qualifications of those supposed to put into action the decision of the majority. I recognized at last the parliamentarian, and knew parliament itself to be one of the symptoms of the death of mankind.

The democracy of the West today is the forerunner of Marxism, which could never succeed without it.

(But after his assumption of power in Germany in 1933, Hitler promptly burned the German Reichstag—and then accused the Communists of setting it ablaze. The Communist Party, thus officially held responsible for this anti-parliament, anti-democratic act, was denied the right to elect representatives in the election, held a few days later, which gave Hitler his grasp on the German nation.)

The difficulty was that if parliament was worth nothing, the Hapsburgs were worth still less. Abolition of Parliament would have left the House of Hapsburg as the only governing power—an idea especially intolerable to me.

It seemed to me a special fault of parliament that after a decision was made, no individual could be held responsible for it. Is not the very idea of responsibility connected with the individual? Actually, is not the task of the true statesman the creation of a worthy plan or ideal, or is his task that of convincing a herd of stupid sheep of the genius of himself and his potential plans? Is a leader’s incapacity proved because he cannot convert a majority to his view?

(This represents a complete distortion, or misunderstanding to say the least, of the basic principle of the democratic system, which is based upon the fact that elected representatives are directly responsible to the people who vote them into office and who in turn can vote them out again. The Dictator, on the other hand, is responsible to no one. Once in power he may act in any manner whatsoever and the people have no recourse, should they be dissatisfied, but to revolution.)

Have the masses, after all, ever been able to understand any new ideas, before success proclaimed their greatness?

What is a statesman to do who cannot win the favor of the masses? Where is the frontier dividing duty to the community from the obligations to one’s personal honor?

He Loves
The Masses

The parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against nature’s vital law of aristocracy.

The mediocre man holding office in a democracy is relieved of care because he knows that no matter what the result of his bungling may be, he will not be held responsible. More, he knows that anyway some day he will have to make room for another similarly great mind. For the simple masses, it is always comforting to know that they have a leader whose wisdom is no greater than their own; the representatives of the majority, that is to say of stupidity, hate nothing more dreadfully than a superior brain.

All this leads to cowardice, for whenever decisions are involved, the “leader” can hide behind the skirts of the majority!

Political crooks carefully beg approval of the majority for every large action—thus casting off all responsibility. This sort of political activity is disgusting and abhorent to a truly decent and brave man, while it is attractive to all contemptible characters—he who is not willing to take personal responsibility for his actions, but seeks refuge, is a lowly scoundrel.

Once the leaders of a nation are such wretches, vengeance follows—all courage for decisive action is lacking, and one will accept any dishonor, no matter how humiliating, rather than make up one’s mind.

(This bit of Mein Kampf philosophy was being widely quoted in England after Hitler commenced calmly to violate the Munich Agreement of September, 1938. Many Britishers began to believe this summed up Hitler’s opinion of Chamberlain.)

We must never forget:

A majority can never replace a man.

A majority always represents both stupidity and cowardice.

There is no principle so wrong as the parliamentary principle.

The Weapon
Of the Lie

Public opinion, of course, depends very largely upon the propaganda work of the press. As a very young man in Vienna, I was astounded at the political methods and accomplishments of the press. Heroes were created overnight, and ridiculous trifles were with amazing ease turned into affairs of state. Showers of abuse could in a flash destroy the careers of long-trusted representatives of the people.

This notorious Jewish method—that of deluging honorable men with vile libel and defamation—must be studied in order to appreciate the true danger of these journalist rascals. They do not hesitate to turn inside out the lives of their enemies in search of dirt, and if nothing filthy is stirred up, then flat lies are turned loose with the conviction that some of it will stick despite thousandfold contradictions, and that in consequence of incessant repetition of the lies, the victim is ultimately buried helplessly beneath them.

Such a rascal assailing some enemy or even all the rest of the world thus hides himself in a cloak of decency and rectitude.

(This is precisely the policy with which Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia’s President Benes in the campaign of 1938, which ended in Benes’ exile in America and in ultimate dismemberment of his country.)

It would take volumes to describe this procedure in all its untruthfulness and fraud.

As to parliament, again, it is impossible to think that it can act intelligently. For instance, vital economic measures are decided by a group of men of which, at most, one-tenth knows anything about economics.

(Here, again, Hitler reveals a hopeless—or a wilful—misunderstanding of the functioning of democratic government, and the role of the civil service and government commissions.

Men of genius are smothered in general elections. Sooner shall the camel pass through the eye of a needle than shall a great man rise out of a common voting of the people.

The real genius almost inevitably personally announces his arrival in world history!

The object of democratic parliamentarism is to form an assembly not of wise men, but of intellectual cripples. Only in this way is it possible for the real wirepuller to remain cautiously in the background from which he is never called to account, no matter how damaging to the nation are the acts which he decrees. Only a lying criminal, lurking in the shadows, can be pleased by such an institution.

All this is infinitely distasteful to every straightforward man, ready to assume personal responsibility. And so, this democracy has evolved into an instrument of that race which shuns right and truth, now and always. Only a Jew can praise an institution as filthy and false as himself.

Opposed to this system is the true German democracy—the free choice of the leader who must assume absolute responsibility for all he does or fails to do. There is no majority rule, but only the rule of the individual who backs his decisions with his wall. If it be argued that perhaps at times no one could be found willing to assume such a dangerous task, there is a single answer:

“Thank God!”

Precisely this is the true meaning of German Democracy—no one unworthy can sneak in through the back door to rule his fellow people. The greatness of the office discourages weaklings and incompetents. But if such a weakling should attempt to steal in, we can most easily see him, and ruthlessly drive him out:

“Out, scoundrel!”

(This is clearly the reasoning by means of which Hitler fanatically believes his present position as Führer of Germany to be divinely justified.

(Yet is it not really the dictator who sneaks in the back door and seizes power over his fellow people? In a democracy, the leaders may be chosen by a free vote of the people, and can be dismissed by the voters at the end of a term limited by those voters.)

Holy Duty
To Rebel

When the House of Hapsburg started with deep determination to root out the perilous Germanism of the Austrian Empire—Germanism which unchecked would destroy the policy of Slavization—the resistence of this persecuted people burst out in a manner the like of which modern German history had never witnessed.

“A man desiring world pacifism could only hope for its achievement through the conquest of the world by the German; for if he should try the opposite way, the idea and the possibility of World Pacifism would die with the destruction of the last German, for no other race has taken this pacifist nonsense so seriously in all its denial of nature and reason.

“Thus to arrive at pacifism one would have to make war. It is precisely this which the American “savior of the world”, Wilson, desired—at least so thought the German “visionaries”, and with this the purpose was fulfilled.

“The pacifist-humane idea ray be perfectly fine when the highest man has conquered the world, and is its absolute ruler; for an idea can do no harm when its practical application is impossible.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter II

For the first time national patriots were rebels. Not against the nation, not against the state, but they arose against a form of government which they knew could only lead to annihilation of their own race. This revolt demonstrated for all history that a state’s authority merits respect and protection only so long as it helps, or at least does not hinder, the desires of a nationality.

State authority can never exist as an end in itself, or tyranny would be sacred and inviolable in this world.

When a people is driven toward destruction by any government power, then rebellion of that people—and every individual member of that people—is not merely a right but a holy duty.

The question as to when such an occasion arises is decided not by theoretical treatises, but by force and by success.

(Thus the Bible of Nazi Germany tells the Czechs and Slovaks that it is both their right and their duty to rebel against Nazi rule!!)

Since the anti-German parliament of the Austrian Empire held a non-German majority, the mere thought of attempting to change the fate of the German-Austrian people through parliament was utter nonsense.

In the opinion of some fools who could think only of “legal” methods, all strong-arm resistance should have been renounced. But this would have destroyed the German people in the Austrian Empire.

Human rights tower above state rights.

But the bespectacled theorist would choose to die for a doctrine rather than for his people.

In order to destroy parliament should one go inside and “bore from within”, or was one to fight from the outside, in frontal assaults against the institution as such? To fight from the outside necessitated arming oneself with unanswerable courage and to be ready for atrocious sacrifices. It means suffering countless blows. It means to be hurled to the ground, perhaps to rise with broken bones. And even then only after supreme struggle could victory come to the dauntless aggressor.

But for such fearless warfare—if it is to be successful—one needs the masses and the children of the masses. These the German movement lacked. So it could only go into the parliament, or so the leaders thought. I suppose, in general, it was believed that the masses could be enlightened through work in this “forum of all the nation.”

The greatest real forum is not the hall of parliament—it is the great public mass meeting. There one will find thousands of people present simply to hear what the speaker has to tell them, whereas in the Chamber of Deputies there are a few hundred loafers, there only because they receive remuneration for their presence.

The German Deputies could drone on until they were hoarse—there was never any result. The moment the German movement sold out to parliament, it produced “parliamentarians”, and not leaders and fighters.

Let it also be said to the Knights of the Pen and to the so-called “literati”—some of whom in a superficial manner supported the German movement—that the greatest upheavals in this world have never sprung out of inkwells.

Pen and ink may be left to explain such things in theory. But the force that has led to the world’s greatest political and religious avalanches was ever and shall ever be the magic of the spoken word.

Only a storm of burning passion, pouring out words like the thunder of a hammer, can reach the heart of a people. He to whom this passion is denied, whose mouth is sealed, is not chosen by Heaven as a prophet.

Only Colossal Lies Worth Telling

“The primitive simplicity of the mind of the masses is more easily misled by a great than a tiny lie—they are accustomed to telling insignificant lies themselves, and so can detect them. But, never having dreamed of the vast possibilities of lies, they generally fail to detect a truly gigantic distortion.

Even when in the process of being enlightened as to the actual truth of the matter, after a great lie has once been told, they will for a long time have their doubts, completely unable to believe that some truth was not contained in what they had so completely accepted. This is a fact which all the great falsifiers and lying societies know all too well.”

Mein Kampf—Chapter X

The masses are essential to every movement. A movement must scrupulously avoid all that can conceivably weaken its ability to sway the masses, not for any “demagogic” reason, but simply because no idea—no matter how all-powerful—is realizable without the masses.

The leaders of the German movement in Austria witlessly overlooked the importance of the people.

The Oldest
“International”

Proof that these leaders had no knowledge of the value of the support of the masses is the way they fought the Catholic Church.

Once the House of Hapsburg had decided to make Austria over into a Slavic state, religious institutions were fraudulently enlisted in this treacherous campaign. For instance, in purely German parishes Czech pastors were appointed who immediataely placed the interests of the Czech nation above those of the church, thus adding impetus to the de-Germanization process. The German clergy, meanwhile, failed utterly to take any advantage of the few similar pro-German opportunities which lay in their hands.

(All this about the old Austro-Hungarian empire under the Hapsburgs favoring the Czechs and allowing the German element to be submerged is, of course, pure historical fiction. It was precisely because the German minority tried to submerge the various other national groups in the empire that the latter finally broke away during the World War. The Czechs, for instance, had to fight underground against Austria for centuries and only achieved their national freedom after 1918.)

All this was a grave violation of German rights by the Catholic clergy.

Worse, the Catholic Church actually seemed consciously to side with the enemies of the German people. The root of this trouble was that the Catholic Church had its capitol outside of Germany, and for this reason it was hostile to the aim of our nationality. Schoenerer (pro-German leader, who was anti-Hapsburg, anti-Catholic and anti-Semetic) attacked the church in the belief that only in this way could the German people perhaps be saved. He felt that if successful in this struggle the sad schism of the church in Germany would be overcome, and that the German nation could gain enormous power—through unity—with such a victory.

Of course, the weak defense of Germans by the clergy was neither malicious in actual nature, nor ordered from “above”, but only the result of submission to the unfortunate habit of looking at things objectively rather than subjectively.

Thus before thinking of anything else, before thinking of the rights and destiny of the German people, the clergy stiffly troubled itself over purely doctrinary notions, such as “government authority”, “democracy”, “pacifism”, “international solidarity”, and such nonsense.

This ruinous way of inspecting ail concerns from the standpoint of a previously accepted belief kills all ability to think oneself subjectively into anything which is objectively contradictory to one’s own doctrine.

Protestants,
Catholics, Jews…

Thus our fine German pacifists pass over in silence the rape of the nation, no matter if it comes most brutally, no matter if change obviously could be brought about only by resistance, for resistance is force—and force is contrary to the heavenly spirit of peace societies!

This is true not only of pacifists and Catholics, but also of Protestants. Protestantism, unlike Catholicism, is rooted in German soil—but it weakens and collapses the moment defense of German interests enters a field not included in the ideal Protestant world. Protestantism gladly upholds the interests of Germany, protecting its language, liberty and “purity”—yes, but only until some enemy of these things must ruthlessly be suppressed. Thus the attitude of Protestantism towards Judaism—the German nation’s most deadly enemy—depends only upon dogma.

Only the German pacifist looks objectively at his own nation. The Jew never looks in the same way at the interest of Judaism. So the duped German socialist is “international” in a way forbidding him to ask justice for his people except by sobbing before his international “friends”. Meanwhile, the Czech, the Pole and others do not act in this ridiculous way.

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

We must not infect our children’s hearts with the curse of “objectivity”. A Catholic should always be a German.

But the religious faiths and institutions of a people should always be inviolable to the people’s political leader—or else he should be a reformer, not a politician. Any different attitude, particularly in Germany, would bring catastrophe.

Summing up the German movement in Austria, I came to conclude it made three serious mistakes:

First, through small understanding of the importance of working toward social justice, the movement lost support of the able-bodied fighting masses.

The Versailles Issue

“When Versailles was imposed upon the German people in 1919, the ruthless oppression of the German people written into that document should have been turned into a spark with which to ignite great flames of national passion.

How Versailles could have been used!

Its injustice should have been burned into the minds of sixty million people until a common hatred and a will of steel raised the cry:

“We want arms!”

Yes, a treaty of peace can be turned to that purpose!

Everything, from the child’s primer to the last newspaper, every theatre and every cinema, every billboard and every blank wall, should have united in service of this one mission, until the fearful prayer of our drawing-room patriots, “Lord deliver us!” changed and became, “Almighty God, Bless our Arms; judge whether we deserve freedom; Lord, Bless our Battle!”

Mein Kampf—Chapter XXV

Second, joining parliament not only destroyed the momentum of the movement, but also burdened it with all the weaknesses innate in the institution of parliament.

Third, the struggle against the Catholic Church robbed the movement of many of the best national elements in innumerable lower and middle class groups.

The Masses…
Important Because Stupid

Once again a political movement which might have achieved the salvation of the German nation and rave through ruthless development of concentrated aims, and strong leadership, instead weakly spread out into too many directions, destroying all its force.

If the leaders of the German movement had only been intelligent enough to see the importance of the masses!

if they had only realized the stupidity of the masses, and understood that for purely psychological reasons one must present not two enemies to the masses, but only one! A single enemy must be pushed forward and all hate must be concentrated upon this sole opponent.

It is part of the genius of a true leader to make even widely different enemies appear to belong to but a single category.

A well-directed, single blow always accomplishes more than many scattered taps.

Moreover, the thought that there are various enemies will frighten people and cause them to doubt their own right. Then they come to fear that perhaps they themselves are wrong and the others are right. Then they are paralyzed. But if the masses believe that they battle but a single enemy, then belief in their own cause is strengthened and hate of the one enemy is ever more bitter, is in fact boundless.

(Hitler here reveals his technique of hypnotizing the masses with brutal clarity. He says in effect that to gain control of the “stupid” masses for whom he has such little regard, a single enemy must be created. If the Jews had not been at hand they—or any other “single enemy”—would have had to be invented. Thus all of Hitler’s polemics against the Jews must be read in the light of this—that for psychological purposes he had to create an enemy. He says that even widely different enemies must be made to appear to be but a single enemy, and thus throughout Mein Kampf—and today in actuality—he attacks the Jew as both a Communist, a Stock Exchange financier, and a rapist—and also as the man behind the scenes in the governments of France, Russia, England, and the United States.)

Those Jews
Again

While the blithering idiots who led the German movement were blissfully unaware of all this, this was manifestly not true of their competitors at the head of the Christian Socialist Party, who understood the masses. But even this movement made its mistakes. For one thing, they attacked the Jews on religious rather than on racial grounds. It was thought that in this way the Czech elements could be enlisted in the cause, for they would be able to share in the oppression of the Jews without fear of themselves being attacked on racial grounds.

All this, of course, gave Jewry little cause for worry. If necessary, a drop of baptismal water would halt everything and save Judaism.

Such half-measures utterly destroyed the value of the Christian Socialist Party’s attack on the Jews. It was false anti-Semitism that was worse than no anti-Semitism at all. It was so impotent that the Jews would have been unhappy without it, for as long as their enemies acted in this manner they were not dangerous.

If the Christian Socialist Party leaders had understood anti-Semitism as well as they understood the masses in general, and if they had adopted more nationalistic tendencies, in my opinion this Party could have successfully changed the fate of the German race.

Since my convictions were not understood elsewhere, and thus not followed in any party of the Austrian state, I could not make up my mind what to do. Should I join some party? They were all incompetent.

My hate of the Hapsburg state increased. Finally I realized that the fate of the German people could be decided only in the Reich, and not in this place. My heart came to dwell where I was not.

I felt with absolute certainty that this Austrian state was bound to oppress everything German, just as it sponsored everything that was not German. The conglomeration of races manifested in the imperial capitol made me ill—all this mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croats, etc.—and always Jews and more Jews. To me the giant city was the personification of incest (sic).

All my time there I was unable to forget the German dialect I learned in my childhood in Bavaria. I could not learn the Viennese jargon. The longer I stayed, the hotter burned my hatred for the alien mixture of races devouring this ancient site of German culture.

Always my heart had beaten only for the German Reich, never for any Austrian monarchy. So I could only dream of the hour of the collapse of this monarchy as the first step in the salvation of the German race.

More and more I longed to go at last to the land to which my secret wishes and hidden love had been calling me since childhood. I hoped one day to be a famous architect, and thus to serve my nation, and I wanted to work on the soil of the fatherland.

Some may not understand this longing, but I appeal to those who, severed from the homeland, must fight for their sacred and holy language, to those who are tormented and persecuted because of their faithfulness to things that are their own, and who burn for the moment that will return them to the arms of the beloved Mother. These will understand me!

He who is German but does not belong to the dear Fatherland knows this horrible longing which torments on and on, ceasing only when the doors open and common blood finds rest and peace in the common Reich.

“A Quiet,
Serious Man”

Vienna was, and remains, the hardest, but most thorough school of my life. Ientered the city a boy, I left it as a quiet, serious man, There I built the foundation of a view of the world, and of political thought, which never left me. I had only to fill in the details.

Only today do I appreciate, really, those years of apprenticeship.

I have dealt so fully with those years because their lessons formed the basis of the Party which after five years of growth has now begun to grow into a great mass movement.

I do not know what my present attitude would be to Judaism, Social Democracy—or rather to Marxism as a whole—and to social problems, if I had not so early, under the pressure of Fate, had this schooling.