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
