Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)/Volume 2/Chapter 1
Second Volume:
The National-Socialist Movement
1. World-Concept and Party
On the 24th of February, 1920, the first great public mass demonstration of our young movement took place. In the Banquet Hall of the Munich Hofbräuhaus the twenty-five theses of the program of the new Party were presented to a crowd of almost two thousand, and every single point accepted amid wild cheering.
This constituted the enunciation of the first tenets and lines of action for a struggle to clear away a veritable chaos of traditional views and ideas and vague, indeed actually harmful, aims. A new power factor was to come into the corrupt and cowardly bourgeois world and into the triumphal march of the Marxist wave of conquest, to bring the chariot of Fate to a halt at the last moment.
It was obvious that the new movement could hope to acquire the necessary importance and the requisite strength for the gigantic struggle only if it succeeded from the first moment in filling the hearts of its followers with the holy conviction that it was not merely dictating a new election-slogan to political life, but was placing before it a new world-concept of importance as a principle.
Consider how pitiful are the considerations upon which so-called “party platforms” are ordinarily cobbled together, to be shined up or remodeled from time to time. The impelling motives, particularly of these bourgeois “platform committees,” must be put under the microscope to enable us to understand and judge the value of these monstrosities under the name of platforms.
It is always one single worry which leads to the redrafting of platforms or the alteration of existing ones: the worry about the outcome of the next election. Whenever it begins to dawn upon these parliamentary statecraftsmen that the good old common people is in revolt and trying to slip out of the harness of the old party bandwagon, they repaint the shafts. Then come the so-called “experienced” and “shrewd,” usually old, parliamentarians, the star-gazers and party astrologers, who can remember analogous cases in their “long political apprenticeship” when the masses’ patience gave way, and who feel something of the sort once more coming dangerously near. So they resort to the formulas, form a “committee,” listen around among the good old common people, sniff at the products of the newspapers, and thus gradually smell out what the common people want, what they loathe, and what they hope for. Every occupational group, even every class of employee is scrupulously studied, and its most secret wishes are probed. Even the “empty catchwords” of the dangerous opposition are suddenly ripe for scrutiny; not infrequently, to the great astonishment of their original discoverers and promulgators, they appear quite innocently, as if taken for granted, among the intellectual equipment of the old parties.
So the committees meet, “revise” the old platform, and write a new one (these gentry change their convictions as the soldier does in the field—whenever the old one gets lousy), in which everyone gets his due. The peasant receives protection for his agriculture, the industrialist protection for his products, the consumer protection on what he buys, the teachers’ salaries are raised, the civil servants’ pensions improved; the State is to take ample care of widows and orphans, commerce is fostered; tariffs are to be lowered, and taxes, if not altogether, at least pretty nearly, abolished. Sometimes it happens that one group has been forgotten, or that a demand current among the people has not been heard of in time. Then anything there is room for is patched on at the last moment, until it can conscientiously be hoped that the army of middle-class Philistines and their wives is soothed and satisfied again. And so, armed with faith in the Lord and the unshakable stupidity of the enfranchised citizens, one may begin the struggle for the “reshaping” of the Reich, as it is called.
When election day is over, and the parliamentarians have held their last mass meeting for five years, turning from the breaking-in of the plebs to the fulfilment of their higher and pleasanter duties, the platform committee breaks up again, and the struggle for the reshaping of affairs falls back to the form of battle for daily bread—which is perhaps why gatherings of parliamentarians are called diets.
Every morning the Honorable Gentleman goes to the House, and if not all the way in, at least as far as the vestibule, where the attendance lists are kept. He labors strenuously for the people by entering his name here, and receives his well-deserved reward in the shape of a small remuneration for his long-continued and exhausting efforts.
After four years, or during other critical periods when the dissolution of the parliamentary body draws nearer and nearer, these gentlemen suddenly begin to feel an irresistible urge coming over them. Just as the grub cannot help turning into a May-bettle, these parliamentary caterpillars leave the home of their species, and flutter out on wings to the good old common people. Once more they speak to the electorate, telling of their own tremendous work and the malicious obstinacy of the others; but they sometimes have rude, in fact ugly expressions thrown at them instead of grateful applause from the obtuse masses. If this ingratitude of the people rises beyond a certain level, only one method can save the day: the glory of the party must be shined up again, the platform needs repairs; the committee comes into existence again, and the farce begins all over. Considering the rock-ribbed stupidity of our humanity we need not be surprised at the resulting success. Steered by its newspapers and blinded by the enticing new program, the “bourgeois” as well as the “proletarian” voting herd goes back into its old stalls and elects its old deceivers.
Thereupon the man of the people and candidate of the working classes is once more transformed into a parliamentary caterpillar, and goes on gorging himself on the branches of State life, to be transformed into a glittering butterfly again four years later.
There is scarcely anything more depressing than to observe the whole process in sober reality, to watch the never-ending fraud.
It is true that in the bourgeois camp people cannot draw from such soils as this the strength to fight out the battle with the organized power of Marxism.
Nor do these gentry ever seriously think of doing so. With all the admitted limitations and intellectual inferiority of these parliamentary medicine-men of the white race, they themselves can not seriously expect to make headway with Western democracy against a doctrine for which democracy and all that goes with it can at best be the means to an end, used to paralyze the enemy and to clear the path for its own progress. Because even if for the time being one part of Marxism very shrewdly tries to pretend integral connection with the principles of democracy, it must still not be forgotten that at the critical moment these gentry did not care twopence for a majority decision on Western democratic principles. That was at the time when the bourgeois parliamentarians saw the security of the Reich guaranteed by the monumental purblindness of superior numbers, while Marxism simply snatched power with a crowd of hooligans, deserters, party high priests and Jewish literati, thus giving this sort of democracy a resounding slap in the face. And that is why it would take the devout spirit of a parliamentary witch-doctor to believe that the brutal determination of those who support and profit by this world plague could be exorcised simply by the spell of Western parliamentarism.
Marxism will march along with democracy until by indirect means it succeeds in getting for its criminal aims the very support of that national intellectual world which it has marked for extermination. But if it became convinced today that in the witches’ cauldron of our parliamentary democracy a majority might suddenly be brewed which would furiously go after Marxism—even if only on a basis of a numerical majority entitling it to legislate—the parliamentary thimble rigging would be over with in an instant. Instead of appealing to the democratic conscience, the standard-bearers of the Red International would then send out a fiery summons to the proletarian masses, and their struggle would move at one jump from the stuffy air of our Parliament-chambers into the factories and on to the streets. Democracy would be done for at once; and what the intellectual ability of these apostles of the people had failed to accomplish in the Parliament, the crowbar and sledgehammer of excited proletarian masses would achieve in a flash, just as in the fall of 1918; they would teach the bourgeois world with crushing force the madness of imagining that one can resist the Jewish world-conquest with the methods of Western democracy.
As aforesaid, it requires a devout spirit, when faced with such an opponent, to bind oneself to rules which for him exist only as an imposture and for his own profit, and are thrown overboard the moment they are no longer to his advantage.
In all parties of so-called bourgeois orientation the whole political struggle actually consists only of a scramble for individual seats in Parliament, in the course of which attitudes and principles are thrown overboard like sand ballast as expediency dictates; naturally their platforms are also arranged accordingly, and their strength measured—though in reverse—by that scale. They lack that great magnetic attraction which the great masses will follow only under the irresistible impression of great and outstanding principles and of the convincing force of unqualified faith in these, along with the fanatical fighting courage to be answerable for them.
At a time when one side, armed with all the weapons of a world-concept, even though it be criminal a thousand times over, prepares for onslaught on an existing order, the other side can successfully resist only if it garbs itself in the form of a new (and in our case political) faith, and exchanges the catch-word of weak and cowardly defense for the battle-cry of bold and brutal attack. If, therefore, someone, particularly one of the so-called nationalist-bourgeois Ministers, let us say a Bavarian Centrist, casts up at our movement the brilliant reproach that it is working for an “upheaval,” there is but one possible answer to such a political Tom Thumb: Right you are; we are trying to make good what you in your criminal stupidity omitted to do. You and your principles of parliamentary cattle-dealing helped to drag the nation into the abyss; we, however, will attack; by setting up a new world-concept and fanatically, unshakably defending its principles we shall build the steps upon which our people will be able one day to ascend again to the Temple of Freedom.
During the period when our movement was being founded, we had therefore to devote our chief care to preventing the army of fighters for a new and high conviction from turning into a mere society for the furthering of parliamentary interests.
The first preventive measure was the creation of a program urging a development whose very inner grandeur seemed calculated to frighten off the petty and weak minds of our present party politicians.
The soundness of our conception of the necessity for sharp definition of our program’s aims was best shown by those fatal ills which led to Germany’s collapse.
The recognition of these was bound to give shape to a new State-concept, which in turn is an essential element in a new conception of the world.
In the first volume I dealt with the word “populist,” pointing out that this designation is too ill-defined an idea to allow the formation of a solid fighting fellowship. All sorts of elements, as far apart as the poles in all their essential views, drift around at present under the blanket name “populist.” So before I go on to the tasks and aims of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party I would like to clarify the idea “populist” and its relation to the Party movement.
The concept “populist” is as vaguely limited, subject to as many interpretations, and as unbounded in practical application as, for instance, the word “religion.” Of this term, too, it is hard for us to form any precise image, either in grasping it intellectually or in its practical effect. The term religious becomes really conceivable only in connection with some sharply defined form of this effect. It is a very pretty, but usually also a cheap statement to describe a man’s character as “deeply religious.” There may perhaps be a very few individuals who feel themselves satisfied by such an altogether general term, and to whom it may even give a definite, and more or less sharp, picture of that particular spiritual state. But since the great masses consist neither of philosophers nor of saints, an absolutely general religious idea of this sort will mostly be to the individual merely a release of his personal thinking and acting, without leading to that effectiveness which inner religious craving possesses when the purely metaphysical and unlimited world of ideas shapes itself into a clearly defined faith. Of course this is not an end in itself, but only a means to the end; but it is the indispensable means of attaining the end at all. And this end is by no means solely ideal, but at bottom also eminently practical. In fact we must realize generally that the highest ideals always correspond to a profound vital necessity, just as the nobility of the highest beauty is, in the end, what is logical and useful.
By helping to raise man above the level of a mere animal existence, faith, in fact contributes to the consolidation and securing of his existence. Cut off his religious training and thus the religious and doctrinal, but in practical importance, moral and ethical, principles which it supports, and the result will be apparent in a grave weakening of the foundations of his existence. In other words we are safe in saying not only that man lives to serve higher ideals, but that these higher ideals in turn are the essentials for his existence as a man. Thus the circle is complete.
Of course even the mere general term religious implies certain basic ideas or convictions, such for instance as the indestructibility of the soul, its eternal life, the existence of a higher Being, etc. But all these ideas, no matter how convincing to the individual, are still subject to the critical scrutiny of that individual, and thus to wavering affirmation or denial, so long as his instinct or insight does not take on the force of law as an apodictic faith. This above all is the fighting element which makes a breach for the recognition of fundamental religious views, and clears the path for them.
Without clearly defined faith the vague multiformity of religious feeling not only would be worthless for human life, but probably would contribute to the general disintegration.
The same thing holds for the term “populist” as for the “religious” idea. It too embodies certain basic conclusions. But these, even though of outstanding importance, are so vague in form that they have no value beyond that of an opinion more or less deserving of recognition, unless they are included as basic elements within the framework of a political party. For the ideals of a world-concept, and the requirements deduced from them, are not realized by pure feeling or men’s inner will as such, any more than freedom is conquered by a universal longing for it. No: only when the mental urge for independence is organized to fight in the form of military force can the compelling wish of a people be transformed into splendid reality.
No world-concept, though it be a thousand times sound and of the greatest value for humanity, has any importance for the practical shaping of a people’s life until its principles have become the banner of a fighting movement, which in its turn will remain a party until its work has been completed in the victory of its ideas, and its party dogmas form the new state principles of the community.
But if a general intellectual conception is to serve as the foundation for the coming development, the first requirement is an absolutely clear understanding of the nature, kind and extent of this conception. Only on this basis can a movement be founded whose inner homogeneity of conviction will develop the necessary strength for the battle. General conceptions must be coined into a political program, a general world-concept into a definite political faith. Since its aim must be a practically attainable one, this faith must not only serve the idea as such, but must take into consideration the fighting means available and necessarily to be used in winning victory for the idea. Along with the abstractly sound intellectual conception, which the program-maker must proclaim, the practical insight of the politician is necessary. Thus an eternal ideal as a guiding star of a section of humanity must unfortunately reconcile itself to considering the weaknesses of this humanity, in order to avoid failing at the outset through general human imperfection. The explorer of truth must be joined by the man who knows the people’s spirit in order to fetch what is humanly possible for tiny mortals from the realm of the ideal and eternally true, and to give it shape.
This transformation of a general idealistic world-concept of highest verity into a definitely delimited, tightly organized, political, fighting fellowship of faith, unified in mind and will, is the most momentous of achievements; the possibility of victory for the idea depends solely on its successful accomplishment. Out of a horde often of millions, who individually have a more or less clear intuition of these truths, and part of whom may understand them, one man must arise to form rock-ribbed principles of apodictic force out of the wavering conceptions of the broad masses, and to fight for their exclusive validity until their rises from the billows of a world of free ideas an unshakable rock of unity in will and belief.
The general right for such action is founded on its necessity, the personal right on success.
When we try to find the inner core of meaning in the word “populist,” we come to the following conclusion:
The ordinary present-day conception of our political world depends generally upon the notion that while the state in itself has creative and cultural vigor, it has nothing to do with racial essentials, but is rather a product of economic necessities, or at best the natural result of a political urge to power. This view, developed to its logical conclusion, leads not only to a misconception of racial forces, but to an undervaluing of the individual. For negation of the variation of the different races in respect to their general culture-developing powers must perforce carry this great error over into the evaluation of the individual person. The assumption of the likeness of races leads to a similar attitude toward peoples, and then toward individual men. And consequently international Marxism itself is but the transference by the Jew Karl Marx of an attitude and a world-concept already long in existence into the form of a definite political profession of faith. Without the underlying foundation of such a generally pre-existing poisoning, the amazing political success of this doctrine would never have been possible. Among the millions, Karl Marx was really the one man who, with the sure eye of the prophet, recognized the essential poisons in the slough of a slowly decaying world, and segregated them, in order, like a black magician, to make a concentrated solution for the quicker destruction of the independent existence of free nations on this earth—all this in the service of his race.
Thus the Marxist doctrine is the concentrated intellectual essence of today’s universal world-concept. Even for that reason alone any struggle against it by our so-called bourgeois world is impossible, nay ridiculous, because even the bourgeois world is essentially impregnated with all these poisons, and is devoted to a world-concept which in general differs from the Marxist one only in degree and in personalities. The bourgeois world is Marxist, but believes in the possibility of the domination of certain groups of men (bourgeoisie), while Marxism itself systematically tries to deliver up the world to the hands of Jewry.
The populist world-concept, on the other hand, recognizes the importance of humanity in its basic racial elements. In principle it sees the state only as a means to an end, and conceives as its end the preservtion of the racial existence of men. In other words it is far from believing in any equality of races, but realizes their inferior or superior merit along with their variation, and feels obliged by this realization, in accordance with the universal Will which rules the universe, to assist the victory of the better and stronger, and to demand the subordination of the worse and weaker. Thus in principle it acknowledges the aristocratic basic idea of Naure, and believes in this law’s validity down to the last individual being. It sees not only the differing merit of races, but the differing merit of individual men. For it there comes out of the husk of the masses the significance of the person, and thus, unlike the disorganizing force of Marxism, its effect is toward organization. It believes in the necessity of an idealization of humanity, since it regards this in turn as the sole essential for the existence of mankind. But it cannot concede the right of existence even to an ethical idea if this idea represents a threat to the racial life of the sustainers of a higher ethics. In a bastardized and negroid world, any concept of the humanly beautiful and noble as well as any image of an idealized future for our part of humanity would be lost forever.
Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparable from the existence of the Aryan. His extinction or downfall would once more drop the dark veil of uncivilized ages upon the globe.
In the eyes of any populist world-concept the undermining of the existence of human culture by destroying its sustainers is the most abhorrent of crimes. He who dares to lay his hand upon the highest likeness of the Lord offends against the good Creator of this miracle, and assists in the expulsion from Paradise.
Hence the populist world-concept accords with the profoundest will of Nature; it restores that free play of forces which is bound to lead to a continuous improvement by selection until at last the best of humanity, by acquiring possession of this earth, wins a free course for activities in fields partly above and partly beyond it.
We all have a presentiment that in the distant future man may be faced with problems to whose solution only a superb race and a ruling nation, supported by the means and the possibilities of a whole globe, will be adequate.
It is obvious that so general a definition of the substantial meaning of a populist world-concept may lead to a thousand different interpretations. And in fact there is scarcely one of our newer political organizations which does not somehow resort to this conception of the world. But its very existence as against the multitude of others proves the difference in their conceptions. The Marxist world-concept, led by a unified head organization, is opposed by a jumble of views which makes but little impression on the united enemy front, even as a matter of ideas. Victories are not won by such feeble weapons. Only when the internationalist world-concept (led politically by organized Marxism) is opposed by a populist one equally unified in organization and direction will success come (supposing equal fighting energy or both sides) to the cause of eternal truth.
But the organized embodiment of a world-concept can take place only on the basis of a definite formulation; what dogmas are for faith, the party principles are for the political party in process of formation.
Therefore an instrument must be made for the populist world-concept which will assure it the possibility of asserting itself in battle, just as the Marxist party organization clears the road for internationalism.
This is the aim of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party.
A definite party embodiment of the populist idea is indispensable for the victory of the populist world-concept; the best proof is a fact which at least indirectly is admitted even by the opponents of this sort of party unit. The very people who never grow tired of insisting that the populist world-concept is by no means the “hereditary property” of an individual, but sleeps or “lives” in the hearts of Heaven knows how many millions, are thus proving that the fact of the universal existence of such ideas has not impeded in the slightest the victory of the opposing world-concept, which is, it is true, a model of party policy in the way it is asserted. If it were not so, the German people even today must have won a tremendous victory, and not be standing on the brink of an abyss. What brought success to the internationalist world-concept was the fact that it was maintained by a political party organized as a storm troop; what defeated the opposing world-concept was the lack of uniform and united support. A world-concept cannot fight and win by unlimited freedom of interpretation of a general view, but only in the limited and thus consolidated form of a political organization.
For this reason I saw it as my own particular task to sort out from the extensive and unformed substance of a general world-concept, and to recast in more or less dogmatic form, those central ideas whose clear limitation makes them capable of unifying such persons as pledge themselves to them. In other words, the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party adopts the essential elements from the basic reasoning of a general populist world-image, and, taking into consideration practical reality, the time and the available human material and its weaknesses, forms a political profession of faith. This makes possible a closely-knit organization of great masses of people, and thus provides the basis for a victorious fight on behalf of this world-concept.