port 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
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:
