I've posted this in the
nαzι Germany, Ideology and Practice thread. Post there if you wish to respond.
Mein Kampf is a boring and dense book to read. If you want to quickly read about his ideology I've the done the work for you.
Hitler was not a Catholic. From the horse's mouth.
Mein Kampf, from the 1941, Reynal and Hitchcock translation:
pg. 23:
The art of historical thinking, which had been taught me in school, has never left me since. More and more, world history became a never-failing source of my understanding of the historical events of the present, that is, politics. What is more, I do not want to ' learn ' it, but I want it to teach me.
pgs. 126-7:
Everything the Pan-German thought was correct from the theoretical point of view; but while the force and the understanding were lacking with which to transmit the theoretical knowledge to the masses that means to bring it into a form which was in keeping with their perceptive ability, which is and will always be limited all knowledge was only prophetic wisdom and had no chance ever to become reality.
This lack of an actual knowledge of human nature, however, led later on to an error in the evaluation of the forces of entire movements as well as of age-old institutions.
But Schoenerer finally had recognized that the questions involved were those of various views of life, but he had not understood that above all only the great masses of a people are suited to be the bearers of such almost religious convictions.
pgs. 138-40:
The first two mistakes which made the Pan-German movement fail were related to each other. The lack of knowledge of the internal driving forces of great changes led to an insufficient evaluation of the importance of the great masses of the people; from this resulted the scanty interest in the social question, the deficient and insufficient courting of the soul of the nation's lower classes, but also the attitude towards parliament that favored this condition.
(. . .)
The serious struggle that the Pan-German movement had to fight out with the Catholic Church can be explained only by the insufficient understanding which one had for the spiritual disposition of the people.
(. . .)
With this, however, the Church did not seem to feel with the German people, but seemed unjustly to take sides with its enemies. The root of the evil was, especially in Schoenerer's opinion, that the head of the Catholic Church was not in Germany, a fact which accounted for the hostility towards the concerns of our nationality.
The so-called cultural problems were almost completely pushed into the background, as was the case with nearly everything in Austria at that time. Decisive for the attitude of the Pan-German movement towards the Catholic Church was far less the Church's attitude against, perhaps, science, etc., than, what is more, its insufficient representation of German rights, and, on the other hand, its continued advancement of especially Slavic arrogance and greed.
pgs. 151-3:
While studying the Pan-German movement and its fight against Rome, at that time and especially in the course of the following years, I came to the following conclusion: The party of that time, through its limited understanding of the importance of social problems, lost the masses of the people that were really fit to fight; joining parliament deprived it of its enormous impetus and burdened it with all the weaknesses of that institution ; it made itself impossible in numerous small and medium circles through its fight against the Catholic Church, thus robbing itself of innumerable of the best elements which the nation can call its own. The practical result of the Austrian Kulturkampf was equal to nil.
However, one succeeded in tearing away from the Church almost one hundred thousand members, but she did not suffer any particular loss because of this. She really did not have to shed any tears for the lost 'lambs'; for the Church lost only what for a long time had not fully belonged to her internally. This was the difference between the new reformation and the old one : that once many of the best of the Church turned away from it because of their inner religious conviction, while now only those went who were not only lukewarm, but for 'considerations' of a political nature. But even from the political point of view the result was just as ridiculous and yet again saddening.
Once more a political movement, promising success and salvation to the German nation, had perished, because it had not been led with the necessary ruthless sobriety, but lost itself in directions that were bound to lead to disunion.
For one thing is certainly true:
The Pan-German movement would probably never have made this mistake if it had not possessed too little understanding for the psyche of the great masses. If its leaders had known that, in order to achieve any success, one must not present, for purely psychological reasons, two enemies to the masses, because this would lead to a complete split-up of the fighting strength, then for this reason alone the direction of the blows of the Pan-German movement would have been aimed against one adversary alone. Nothing is more dangerous for a political party than to be led by those jacks-of-all-trades who want to do everything without ever attaining the least thing.
No matter how much one had to criticize an individual denomination, the political party must not for a moment lose sight of the fact that, according to all previous experience of history, a purely political party, in a similar situation, has never succeeded in bringing about a religious reformation. But one does not study history in order to forget its doctrines when they are to be applied in practice, or to believe that things are now different that is, that the eternal truth of history is now no longer applicable; but from history one learns just the practical application for the present. But he who is not able to do this must not imagine that he is a political 'leader* ; he is in reality a shallow, and also frequently a very vainglorious, simpleton, and no amount of good-will excuses his practical inability.
As a whole, and at all times, the efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.
The more uniformly the fighting will of a people is put into action, the greater will be the magnetic force of the movement and the more powerful the impetus of the blow. It is part of the genius of a great leader to make adversaries of different fields appear as always belonging to one category only, because to weak and unstable characters the knowledge that there are various enemies will lead only too easily to incipient doubts as to their own cause.
As soon as the wavering masses find themselves confronting too many enemies, objectivity at once steps in, and the question is raised whether actually all the others are wrong and their own nation or their own movement alone is right.
Also with this comes the first paralysis of their own strength. Therefore, a number of essentially different internal enemies must always be regarded as one in such a
way that in the opinion of the mass of one's own adherents the war is being waged against one enemy alone. This strengthens the belief in one's own cause and increases one's bitterness against the attacker.
Its goal was rightly viewed, its will was pure, but the way it chose was wrong.
It was like a mountain climber who fixes the peak that he is to climb well and correctly with his eyes and who sets out on his way with the greatest determination and energy, but who, paying no attention to the way, always fixing his eye on the goal, neither sees nor examines the condition of the ascent thus finally failing.
pgs. 169-71:
Nature herself, in times of great distress or bad climatic conditions, or where the yields of the soil are poor, steps in by restricting the population of certain countries or races; this, however, is a method that is as wise as it is ruthless. She does not restrict the procreative faculty as such, but the conservation of the propagated, by subjecting them to such severe trials and deprivations that all less strong and healthy are forced to return to the bosom of the eternally Unknown. What she allows to endure beyond the inclemency of existence is tested in a thousand ways, hard and well suited to continue to procreate, so that the thoroughgoing selection may start again from the beginning. Thus, by acting brutally against the individual and calling him back to herself the moment he is not equal to weather the storms of life, she conserves the strength of the race and species itself and even spurs it towards the highest achievements.
Her diminishing of the number is a strengthening of the individual, thus finally a strengthening of the species.
But it is different if man decides to carry out the restriction of his numbers. He is not cut out of the same wood as Nature, but is 'human.1 He knows better than this cruel Queen of all Wisdom. He does not restrict the continued existence of the individual, but rather propagation itself. This seems to him, who always sees only himself and never the race, more human and more justified than the reverse. Unfortunately, the consequences are also now the reverse:
While Nature, by giving free rein to propagation but subjecting the conservation of life to the severest trials, and by choosing, from a surplus number of individuals, those who are most worthy of living, thus preserving them alone and now making them the bearers of the preservation of the species, man restricts propagation, but on the other hand he makes efforts to keep alive, at any price, every human being once it is born. This correction of the divine will seems to him to be as wise as it is human, and he is glad that he has outwitted Nature once more in such a matter, and that he even has given proof of her shortcomings. But, of course, the Lord's dear little monkey does not at all like to see or to hear that in reality, although the number has certainly been restricted, the value of the individual has been diminished.
Because, once propagation as such has been limited and the number of births reduced, the natural struggle for existence, that allows only the very strongest and healthiest to survive, is replaced by the natural urge to 'save' at any price also the weakest and even sickest, thus planting the germ for a succession that is bound to become more and more miserable the longer this derision of Nature and of her will is continued.
But the result will be that one day existence in this world will be denied such a people; because man may certainly defy the eternal law of the will to continue, but nevertheless revenge will come, sooner or later. A stronger generation will drive out the weaklings, because in its ultimate form the urge to live will again and again break the ridiculous fetters of a so-called 'humanity' of the individual, so that its place will be taken by the 'humanity' of Nature which destroys weakness in order to give its place to strength.
He who, therefore, would secure the German people's existence by way of a self-restriction of its increase robs it of its future.
pg. 177:
The size of a people's living area includes an essential factor for the determination of its outward security. The greater the amount of room a people has at its disposal, the greater is also its natural protection; because military victories over nations crowded in small territories have always been reached more quickly and more easily, especially more effectively and more completely, than in the cases of States which are territorially greater in size. The size of the State territory, therefore, gives a certain protection against frivolous attacks, as success may be gained only after long and severe fighting and, therefore, the risk of an impertinent surprise attack, except for quite unusual reasons, will appear too great. In the greatness of the State territory, therefore, lies a reason for the easier preservation of a nation's liberty and independence, whereas, in the reverse case, the smallness of such a formation simply invites seizure.
pgs. 181-3:
For Germany, therefore, the only possibility of carrying out a sound territorial policy was to be found in the acquisition of new soil in Europe proper. Colonies cannot serve this purpose, since they do not appear suitable for settlement with Europeans on a large scale. But in the nineteenth century it was no longer possible to gain such colonial territories in a peaceful way. Such a colonial policy could only have been carried out by means of a hard struggle which would have been fought out more suitably, not for territories outside Europe, but rather for land in the home continent itself.
Such a decision, however, requires undivided devotion. It doesn't do to set out half-heartedly or even hesitatingly on a task, the execution of which seems possible only with the exertion of the utmost energy. Then also the entire political authority of the Reich would have had to serve this exclusive purpose; never should any step have been taken from considerations other than the realization of this task and its conditions. One had to make it clear to oneself that this goal could be reached only through fighting, and quietly to face the passage at arms.
All the alliances should have been examined exclusively from this point of view and evaluated according to their suitability. If one wanted land and soil in Europe, then by and large this could only have been done at Russia's expense, and then the new Reich would again have to start marching along the road of the knights of the orders of former times to give, with the help of the German sword, the soil to the plow and the daily bread to the nation.
pg. 287:
These, however, are not only the really great statesmen, but also all other great reformers. Side by side with Frederick the Great stands a Martin Luther as well as a Richard Wagner.
pg. 392:
Just as little as Nature desires a mating between weaker individuals and stronger ones, far less she desires the mixing of a higher race with a lower one, as in this case her entire work of higher breeding, which has perhaps taken hundreds of thousands of years, would tumble at one blow.
Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrible clarity that with any mixing of the blood of the Aryan with lower races the result was the end of the culture-bearer. North America, the population of which consists for the greatest part of Germanic elements which mix only very little with the lower, colored races displays a humanity and a culture different from those of Central and South America, where chiefly the Romanic immigrants have sometimes mixed with the aborigines on a large scale. By this example alone one may clearly and distinctly recognize the influence of the race mixture. The Germanic of the North American continent, who has remained pure and less intermixed, has become the master of that continent, he will remain so until he, too, falls victim to the shame of blood-mixing.
The result of any crossing, in brief, is always the following:
(a) Lowering of the standard of the higher race,
(b) Physical and mental regression, and, with it, the beginning of a slowly but steadily progressive lingering illness.
To bring about such a development means nothing less than sinning against the will of the Eternal Creator.
pgs. 394-6:
For example, he who actually desires, with all his heart, the victory of the pacifistic idea in this world would have to stand up, with all available means, for the conquest of the world by the Germans; for if it should come about the other way round, then, with the last German, the last pacifist would die off, as the other part of the world has hardly ever been taken in so deeply by this nonsense, adverse to nature and to reason, as unfortunately our own people. Therefore, whether one wanted to or not, if one had the serious will, one would have to decide to wage war in order to arrive at pacifism. This and nothing else was what the American world-redeemer Wilson wanted to have done, at least our German visionaries believed in this. With this, then, the purpose was fulfilled.
Indeed, the pacifist-humane idea is perhaps quite good whenever the man of the highest standard has previously conquered and subjected the world to a degree that makes him the only master of this globe. Thus the idea is more and more deprived of the possibility of a harmful effect in the measure in which its practical application becomes rare and finally impossible. Therefore, first fight, and then one may see what can be done. In the other case, mankind has passed the climax of its development, and the end is not the rule of some ethical 'idea/ but barbarism, and, in consequence, chaos. Naturally, here the one or the other may laugh, but this planet has driven on its course through the ether for millions of years without men, and the day may come when it will do so again, if people forget that they owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of some crazy ideologists, but to the knowledge and the ruthless application of Nature's brazen laws.
Everything that today we admire on this earth science and art, technique and inventions is only the creative product of a few peoples and perhaps originally of one race. On them now depends also the existence of this entire culture. If they perish, then the beauty of this earth sinks into the grave with them.
No matter how much the soil, for instance, is able to influence the people, the result will always be a different one, according to the races under consideration. The scanty fertility of a living space may instigate one race towards the highest achievements, while with another race this may only become the cause for the most dire poverty and ultimate malnutrition with all its consequences. The inner disposition of the peoples is always decisive for the way in which outward influences work themselves out. What leads one people to starvation, trains the other for hard work.
All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died off through blood-poisoning. The ultimate cause of such a decline was always the forgetting that all culture depends on men and not the reverse; that means, that in order to save a certain culture the man who created it has to be saved. But the preservation is bound to the brazen law of necessity and of the right of the victory of the best and the strongest in this world.
(. . .)
pg. 397-8:
It is a futile enterprise to argue which race or races were the original bearers of human culture and, with it, the actual founders of what we sum up with the word 'mankind.' It is simpler to put this question to oneself with regard to the present, and here the answer follows easily and distinctly. What we see before us of human culture today, the results of art, science, and techniques, is almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. But just this fact admits of the not unfounded conclusion that he alone was the founder of higher humanity as a whole, thus the prototype of what we understand by the word 'man.' He is the Prometheus of mankind, out of whose bright forehead springs the divine spark of genius at all times, forever rekindling that fire which in the form of knowledge lightened up the night of silent secrets and thus made man climb the path towards the position of master of the other beings on this earth. Exclude him and deep darkness will again fall upon the earth, perhaps even, after a few thousand years, human culture would perish and the world would turn into a desert.
pg. 406:
The blood-mixing, however, with the lowering of the racial level caused by it, is the sole cause of the dying-off of old cultures; for the people do not perish by lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in the pure blood.
All that is not race in this world is trash.
All world historical events, however, are only the expression of the races' instinct of self-preservation in its good or in its evil meaning.
pgs. 588-9:
During the past hundred years it was truly a misfortune to be compelled to observe how in these circles, sometimes in the best of faith, one played with the word 'Germanizing.' I myself remember how during my youth this very word led to quite unbelievably wrong conceptions. Even in Pan-German circles one could at that time hear the opinion that Austrian Germanity, with promoting help on the part of the government, could very well succeed in a Germanization of the Austrian Slavs, whereby, however, one did not in the least see clearly the fact that a Germanization can only be carried out with the soil and never with men.
For what one generally understood by this word was only the enforced outward acceptance of the German language. But it is a hardly conceivable mistake in thinking to believe that, let us say, a negro or a Chinese would become a German because he learns German and is prepared to speak the German language in the future and perhaps to give his vote to a German political party. It never became clear to our bourgeois national world that any Germanization of this kind is in reality a de-Germanization. For if today by the enforcement of a general language the differences between various peoples that hitherto caught the eye are bridged and finally wiped out, it would mean the beginning of a hybridization and with this, in our case, not a Germanization but a destruction of the Germanic element. In history
it happens only too frequently that the outward means of power of a conquering people succeeds in forcing their language upon the oppressed, but that after a thousand years their language is spoken by a different people and the conquerors thus become actually the vanquished.
As the nationality, or rather the race, is not rooted in the language but in the blood, one could be permitted to speak of a Germanization only if one could succeed in changing, by such a procedure, the blood of the subjugated. But this is impossible. Except, perhaps, if by a blood blending a change were to take place which then, however, would mean the lowering of the standard of the higher race. Therefore the final result of such a procedure would be the destruction of just those qualities which once made the conquering people capable of victory. By a coupling with a lower race, the cultural energies especially would disappear, though the resulting mixture would speak a thousand times the language of the formerly higher race. For some time there will take place a certain wrestling between the various mentalities and it may be that then the more and more sinking people, in a last effort, so to speak, will bring to light astounding cultural values. But they are only the single elements pertaining to the higher race or bastards, in whom after the first crossing the better blood has the upper hand and which now tries to struggle through ; but never the final products of cross-breeding. In them a culturally backward movement will always show itself.
pgs. 594-6:
The State is a means to an end. Its end is the preservation and the promotion of a community of physically and psychically equal living beings. This very preservation comprises first the racial stock and thereby it permits the free development of all the forces slumbering in this race. Again and again a part of them will primarily serve the preservation of the physical life and only another part will serve the promotion of a further mental development. But actually the one always creates the presumption for the other.
States that do not serve this purpose are faulty specimens, even miscarriages. The fact of their existence makes as little difference as perhaps the success of a filibuster community is able to justify robbery.
We National Socialists, as the protagonists of a new view of life, must never stand on the famous 'ground and false at that of facts/ In this case we would no longer be the fighters for a new great idea, but the coolies of the present lie. We must sharply distinguish between the State as a vessel and the race as the content. This vessel has meaning only if it is able to preserve and to protect the contents; in the reverse case it is useless.
Thus the highest purpose of the folkish State is the care for the preservation of those racial primal elements which, supplying culture, create the beauty and dignity of a higher humanity. We, as Aryans, are therefore able to imagine a State only to be the living organism of a nationality which not only safeguards the preservation of that nationality, but which, by a further training of its spiritual and ideal abilities, leads it to the highest freedom.
What today one tries to force upon us as a State is mostly only the product of deepest human aberration, with untold misery as a consequence.
We National Socialists know that with this opinion we stand as revolutionaries in the world of today, and that we are branded as such. But our thinking and acting must not be determined by the applause or the rejection of our time, but by the binding obligation to a truth which we have realized. Then we may be convinced that the higher insight of posterity will not only understand but also affirm and ennoble our procedure of today.
pg. 601:
The German Reich, as a State, should include all Germans, not only with the task of collecting from the people the most valuable stocks of racially primal elements and preserving them, but also to lead them, gradually and safely, to a dominating position.
pgs 603-10:
In general even Nature has the habit of making certain corrective decisions about the racial purity of mortal beings. Nature likes bastards only little. Especially the first products of such cross-breeding, say in the third, fourth or fifth generation, have to suffer bitterly. Not only the importance of the originally highest constituent of the cross-breeding is taken from them, but they lack, with the deficient unity of the blood, also the unity of will power and determination for life as a whole. In all critical moments, when the racially uniform being makes correct decisions, and consistent decisions at that, the racially torn will become uncertain, that means he will arrive at half measures.
Taking both facts together, this means not only a certain inferiority of the racially unstable as compared with the racially uniform, but in practice also the possibility of a quicker decline. In countless cases where the race holds out the bastard breaks down. In this must be seen the correction of Nature. Frequently it goes even farther. It limits the possibility of propagation. By this Nature limits the fertility of remote crossings as a whole and thus makes them die off.
If, for example, a single individual of a certain race were to enter into a union with a racially lower individual, the result would be, first, a lowering of the standard in itself; further it would mean a weakening of the offspring as compared with the surroundings which remained racially unmixed. With the complete prevention of a further blood influx on the part of the highest race, the bastards, with continued mutual crossing, would either die off because of Nature's wisely reducing their ability of resistance, or in the course of thousands of years they would form a new mixture in which the original individual elements, in consequence of a thousandfold crossing, are completely mixed and no longer recognizable.
Thus a new nationality with a certain herd-like resistibility would have been formed, but compared with the highest race which helped in forming the first cross-breed, it would be considerably reduced in its spiritual and cultural importance. But also, in this case, the product of the crossing would succuмb in the mutual struggle for life, as long as there exists a higher race, that remained unmixed, as opponent. Any herd-like inner completeness of this new national body, formed in the course of a thousand years, would nevertheless, in consequence of the general lowering of the race standard and the diminishing of mental elasticity and creative ability, conditioned by it, not suffice for overcoming victoriously the struggle with an equally uniform but spiritually and culturally superior race.
Thus one can establish the following valid conclusion:
Every race-crossing leads necessarily sooner or later to the decline of the mixed product, as long as the higher part of this crossing still exists in some racially pure unity. The danger for the mixed product is abolished only in the moment of the bastardization of the last higher, racially pure element. In this is rooted a slow yet natural process of regeneration which gradually eliminates racial poisonings, as long as there still exists a basic stock of racially pure elements and no further bastardization takes place.
Such a process can occur by itself with living beings with a strong race instinct who only through special circuмstances or some sort of pressure have been thrown from the road of normal, racially pure propagation. As soon as this pressing situation is over, that part which has remained pure will immediately strive again towards mating with equals, thus checking a further mixing. Thus the results of bastardization step automatically into the background, provided their number has not yet increased so boundlessly that a serious resistance on the part of those who have remained racially pure is no longer in question.
Man, once he has become devoid of instinct and does not recognize the obligation imposed on him by Nature, can in general not hope for such a correction on the part of Nature until he has replaced his lost instinct by perceptive knowledge; the latter, now, has to do the necessary work of repair.
But the danger is very great that the man who once has become blind will tear down the race barriers more and more, till finally even the last remainder of his best part is lost. Then there remains actually nothing but a uniform mixture, such as appears as ideal to the idiotic world reformers of our days; but after a short time it would expel ideals from the world. However: a great herd could be formed in this way; one can brew a herd animal', but from such a mixture a man as culture-bearer and, better still, as culture-founder, will never result. With this mankind's mission could be looked upon as finished.
He who does not want the earth to march towards this condition has to convert himself to the opinion that it is the task of the Germanic States above all to take care primarily that in principle a further bastardization is checked.
The generation of our present-day notorious weaklings will of course at once cry out against this and will moan and complain about infringements on the most sacred human rights, etc. No, there is only one most sacred human right, and this right is at the same time the most sacred obligation, namely: to see to it that the blood is preserved pure, so that by the preservation of the best human material a possibility is given for a more noble development of these human beings.
Thus a folkish State primarily will have to lift marriage out of the level of a permanent race degradation in order to give it the consecration of that institution which is called upon to beget images of the Lord and not deformities half man and half ape.
The protest against this from so-called humane reasons damnably suits a time which on the one hand gives every depraved degenerate the possibility for propagation, but which burdens the products of such a union themselves as well as their contemporaries with untold misery, while on the other hand, the means for preventing births to even the healthiest parents are offered for sale in every drug store and by every street hawker. Thus in this present State of quiet and order, in the eyes of its representatives, this brave bourgeois national world, the prevention of the procreative faculty of sufferers from syphilis, tuberculosis, heredity diseases, of cripples and cretins is a crime, whereas the practical prevention of the procreative faculty of millions of the best is not looked upon as an evil and does not offend the good morals of this hypocritical society, but is rather of advantage to the short-sighted inertia of thought. For, if this were not the case, one ought at least to ponder seriously on the question of how to create the presumptions for the feeding and the preservation of those beings who as the healthy bearers of our nation will some day have to serve the same task with regard to coming generations.
How boundlessly unideal and ignoble is this entire system! One no longer endeavors to breed the best for posterity, but one lets things go as they go. That thereby our churches sin also against the image of the Lord Whose importance is stressed most of all by them, lies entirely in the line of their present-day activity that always speaks of the spirit and lets its bearer, man, degenerate to the level of the depraved proletarian. Then, however, with sheepish faces, one gapes at the small effect of the Christian faith in one's own country, about the terrible ungodliness' of this physically botched, and therefore naturally also mentally degenerated, miserable lot, and one seeks compensation by success with Hottentots and Zulu Kafirs, with the blessing of the Church. While our European peoples, the Lord be praised and thanked, fall into a state of physical and moral leprosy, the pious missionary wanders to Central Africa and establishes negro missions, till there our 'higher culture' will have turned healthy, though primitive and inferior, human children into a foul breed of bastards.
It would correspond to the meaning of the most noble this world if our two Christian churches, instead of annoying the negroes with missions which they neither wish nor understand, would teach our European mankind with kindness but in all earnestness, that with unhealthy parents it is a God-pleasing work to take pity on a healthy, poor little orphan, in order to give him father and mother, rather than putting a sick child into the world which will bring itself and the rest of the world only misfortune and suffering.
The folkish State has to make up for what is today neglected in this field in all directions. It has to put the race into the center of life in general. It has to care for its preservation in purity. It has to make the child the most precious possession of a people. It has to take care that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: to be sick and to bring children into the world despite one's own deficiencies; but one highest honor: to renounce this. Further, on the other hand this has to be looked upon as objectionable: to keep healthy children from the nation. Thereby the State has to appear as the guardian of a thousand years' future, in the face of which the wish and the egoism of the individual appears as nothing and has to submit. It has to put the most modern medical means at the service of this knowledge. It has to declare unfit for propagation everybody who is visibly ill and has inherited a disease and it has to carry this out in practice.
On the other hand, it has to care that the fertility of the healthy woman is not limited by the financial mismanagement of a State regime which makes children a curse for the parents. It has to do away with that foul, nay criminal, indifference with which today the social presumptions of a family with many children is treated, and in its place it has to consider itself the guardian of this precious blessing of a people. Its care belongs more to the child than to the adult.
He who is not physically and mentally healthy and worthy must not perpetuate his misery in the body of his child. Here the folkish State has to achieve the most enormous work of education. Some day it will appear as a greater deed than the most victorious wars of our present bourgeois era. By education it has to teach the individual that it is not a disgrace but only a regrettable misfortune to be sick and weakly, but that it is a crime and therefore at the same time a disgrace to dishonor this misfortune by one's egoism by burdening it again upon an innocent being; that in the face of this it gives proof of a nobility of the highest mind and of most admirable humaneness if the innocently sick, by renouncing his own child, gives his love and tenderness to an unknown, poor young descendant of his nationality, whose health promises that one day he will become a vigorous member of a powerful community. With this work of education the State has to render the purely spiritual supplement of its practical activity. Without considering understanding or non-understanding, approval or disapproval, it has to act in this sense.
The prevention of the procreative faculty and possibility on the part of physically degenerated and mentally sick people, for only six hundred years, would not only free mankind of immeasurable misfortune, but would also contribute to a restoration that appears hardly believable today. If thus the conscious methodical promotion of the fertility of the most healthy bearers of the nationality is realized, the result will be a race which, at least at first, will have eliminated the germs of our present physical, and with it of the spiritual, decline.
For once a people and a State have set out on this way, then one will direct one's eyes at increasing the racially most valuable nucleus of the people and its very fertility, so that finally the entire nationality may share the blessing of a high-bred racial treasure.
The way towards this is above all that the State does not leave the settlement of newly won land to chance, but that it subjects it to special norms. Specially formed race commissions have to issue a certificate of settlement to the individual; but this is dependent on a certain racial purity, to be established. Thus frontier colonies can gradually be formed whose inhabitants are exclusively bearers of highest racial purity and with this of highest racial efficiency. They are a precious national treasure of the entire people; their growth must fill every national member with pride and joyful confidence, as in them there lies the germ for the ultimate great future development of their own people, even of mankind.
In the folkish State the folkish view of life has finally to succeed in bringing about that nobler era when men see their cart no longer in the better breeding of dogs, horses and cats, but rather in the uplifting of mankind itself, an era in which the one knowingly and silently renounces, and the other gladly gives and sacrifices.
That this is possible must not be denied in a world in which hundreds and hundreds of thousands of men voluntarily impose celibacy upon themselves, obliged and bound by nothing but a command of the Church.
Should not the same renunciation be possible if it is replaced by the admonition finally to put an end to the permanently continuous original sin of a race poisoning and to give the Almighty Creator beings as He Himself created them?
pgs. 620-1:
In what form the State continues this education is beside the point today, but the point is that it should do it and seek the ways that are useful for this purpose. The folkish State has to consider it a task of State and has to carry out through State institutions the physical education of the post-school days exactly as the intellectual education. Thereby this education, in broad outlines, can be the preparation for the future service in the army. Then the army no longer has to teach the young men, as hitherto, the fundamentals of the most simple drills, nor will it receive recruits in the current meaning, but it has to turn the young man, who is already physically completely prepared, into a soldier.
In the folkish State, therefore, the army no longer has to teach the individual how to walk and to stand, but it has to be looked upon as the ultimate and highest school of patriotic education. In the army, the young recruit should receive the necessary training in arms, but at the same time he should be formed further for his future life. But at the head of the military education should stand what had to be attributed even to the old army as its highest merit: in this school the boy should be turned into a man; and in this school he should not only learn to obey, but also acquire the training for commanding later on. He has to learn to be silent, not only when he is blamed justly, but he has also to learn, if necessary, to bear injustice in silence.
Further, strengthened by the confidence in his own force, seized by the strength of the commonly experienced esprit de corps, he has to gain the conviction of the invincibility of his own nationality.
After terminating the service in the army, he should be given two docuмents : his diploma as a State citizen as a legal docuмent which now permits him public activity, and his certificate of health as the confirmation of physical health for marriage.
Analogous with the education of the boy, the folkish State can also direct the education of the girl from the same viewpoints. Here too the main stress should be put on physical training, and only after this on the promotion of spiritual and last of all, the intellectual values. The goal of female education has invariably to be the future mother.
pg. 635:
Also in science the folkish State has to see a means for the promotion of national pride. Not only world history, but the entire culture history must be taught from this viewpoint. An inventor must appear great not only as an inventor, but greater still as a fellow citizen. The admiration for every great deed has to be recast into pride in the fortunate performer of this deed as a member of one's own nation. From the vast number of all the great names of German history the greatest have to be singled out and presented to youth so impressively as to become the pillars of an unshakable national sentiment.
pgs. 636-7:
Our time's fear of chauvinism is the sign of its impotence. Since it not only lacks but considers disagreeable all seething energy, Destiny has not chosen it for a great deed. For the greatest changes on this earth would not have been thinkable if their driving force, instead of fanatical, even hysterical passion, had been only the bourgeois virtues of peace and order. <+
It is certain, however, that this world approaches a great change. And there can be only the sole question whether it turns out for the benefit of Aryan mankind or for the profit of the eternal Jєω.
The folkish State will have to see to it that by a suitable education of youth a mature generation is produced for the ultimate and greatest decisions on this globe.
That people, however, which as the first sets out on this way will be victorious.
The folkish State's entire work of education and training has some day to find its culmination in branding, through instinct and reason, the race sense and race feeling into the hearts and brains of the youth with whom it is entrusted. No boy or girl must leave school without having been led to the ultimate knowledge of the necessity and the nature of the purity of the blood. Thus the assumption is created for the racial foundations of our nationality and by it, in turn, the safeguarding of the presumptions for the future cultural development.
For all physical and spiritual training would still remain useless unless it benefited a human being who is fundamentally ready and determined to preserve himself and his kind.
In the reverse case there would happen what we Germans have to deplore greatly even now, without the entire size of this tragic misfortune having perhaps been understood so fa: that also in future we would remain only cultural fertilizer,
not only in the meaning of the limited conception of our present bourgeois opinion, which sees in the individual lost national member only the lost citizen, but in the meaning of the most painful realization that then, despite all our knowledge and skill, our blood is nevertheless doomed to decline. By mating again and again with other races, we may well lift those races out of their former cultural level to a higher one, but we sink down from our own high level forever.
For the rest, this education, too, from the racial viewpoint, must find its final completion in the military service. As on the whole the period of the military service has to be considered the conclusion of the normal education of the average German.
pgs. 639-40:
A further example may show how boundlessly today's mankind sins in this direction. From time to time it is demonstrated to the German petty bourgeois in illustrated periodicals that for the first time here or there a negro has become a lawyer, teacher, even clergyman, or even a leading opera tenor or something of that kind. While the stupid bourgeoisie, marveling, takes cognizance of this miraculous training, filled with respect for this fabulous result of our present educative skill, the Jєω knows very slyly how to construe from this a new proof of the correctness of his theory of the equality of men which he means to instill into the nations.
It does not dawn upon this depraved bourgeois world that here one has actually to do with a sin against all reason; that it is a criminal absurdity to train a born half ape until one believes a lawyer has been made of him, while millions of members of the highest culture race have to remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the eternal Creator to let hundreds and hundreds of thousands of His most talented beings degenerate in the proletarian swamp of today, while Hottentots and Zulu Kafirs are trained for intellectual vocations. For it is training, exactly as that of the poodle, and not a scientific 'education.' The same trouble and care, applied to intelligent races, would fit each individual a thousand times better for the same achievements.
pgs. 644-5:
It will be the task of a folkish State to take care by its educational arrangements that, by fresh infusion of blood from below, a perpetual renovation of the existing intellectual layers takes place. The State has the obligation of selecting with utmost care and exactitude, out of the total of fellow citizens, that human material that is evidently favored by Nature and to employ it in the service of the community.
pgs. 656-7:
Citizenship today is acquired, as already said, primarily through birth within the frontiers of a State. Thereby race or nationality play no rdle whatsoever. Thus a negro, who formerly lived in the German protectorates and who now has his domicile in Germany, in the person of his child now puts into the world a 'German citizen.' In the same way, the child of any Jєω, Pole, African or Asiatic can without further ado be declared a German citizen.
(. . .)
Thus every year these formations, called States, take in poisonous elements which they are hardly able to overcome.
pg. 659:
The bestowal of the State citizen certificate should be combined with the solemn oath to the national community and the State. This certificate must signify a bond that bridges all cleavages and unites all. It must be a greater honor to be a citizen of this Reich as a street cleaner, than to be a king in a foreign State.
pg. 676
The individual may state with pain today that with the appearance of Christianity the first spiritual terror has been brought into the much freer old world, but he will not be able to deny the fact that since then the world has been threatened and dominated by this compulsion, and that compulsion is broken only by compulsion, and terror by terror. Only then can a new condition be created by construction.
pgs. 736-7:
In the midsummer of 1920, the new flag appeared in public for the first time. It was superbly suited for our young movement. It was as young and new as the movement. No one had ever seen it before; in those days it had an effect like that of a flaming torch. We ourselves had an almost childlike joy when a faithful woman member had carried out the design for the first time and delivered the flag. Only a few months later we had in Munich half a dozen of these flags, and the continuously increasing body of supervisors especially contributed to spreading the new symbol of the movement.
And a symbol it is indeed! Not only that, by the only colors, ardently loved by us all, that once had gained so much honor for the German people, our adoration for the past is demonstrated, it was also the best incorporation of the movement's intentions. As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement, in the white the national idea, in the swastika the mission of the fight for the victory of Aryan man, and at the same time also the victory of the idea of creative work which in itself is and will always be anti-Semitic.
pgs. 752-3:
The very characteristic of so-called great questions of the time implies that thousands work for their solution, that many think they are called upon, that even Destiny herself suggests many of them to be chosen, so that in the free play of energies she gives the final victory to the man who is stronger and more able, and entrusts him with the solution of the problem.
Thus it may be that centuries, dissatisfied with the shaping of their religious life, long for a renovation, and that out of this psychic urge dozens and more men arise who, based on their insight and knowledge, believe themselves called upon for the solution of this religious distress, in order to appear as prophets of a new doctrine or at least as fighters against an existing one.
It is certain that also here, by virtue of a natural order, the strongest man is chosen for fulfilling the great mission; but the realization that this one man is the one who is exclusively called upon usually dawns upon the others very late. On the contrary, they all look upon themselves as having equal rights and as being called upon for the solution of this task, and their contemporaries usually are least able to distinguish who of them because solely capable of the highest achievements solely deserves their support.
Thus in the course of centuries, frequently even within one and the same period, various men appear, they found movements in order to fight for objectives which at least so they assert are the same or are felt by the great masses to be the same. The people itself harbors vague wishes and has general convictions, without, however, being able to see perfectly clearly about the very nature of the objective or of its own wish, or even about the possibilities of realizing them.
The tragedy lies in the fact that those men aim at the same goal by quite different ways, without knowing one another, and that therefore, in the purest faith in their own mission, they consider themselves obliged to go their own way without considering the others.
That such movements, parties, and religious groups originate completely independent of one another, solely out of the general intention of the period, that is what appears as tragic at least at first sight because people are too
much inclined towards the opinion that the energies, scattered over various ways, would, if concentrated upon one single way, lead to success more quickly and more
surely. But this is not the case. Nature herself, in her inexorable logic, makes the decision by having the various groups compete with one another and by having them fight for the palm of victory, and by leading that movement to the goal that has chosen the clearest, shortest and surest way.
pg. 827:
Both, yes, both Christian denominations regard with indifference this desecration and annihilation of a noble and unique race to whom the earth was given by the grace of God. What is important for the earth's future is not whether Protestants vanquish Catholics or Catholics vanquish Protestants, but whether Aryan humanity maintains itself or dies out.
Nevertheless, today the two denominations do not fight against the despoiler of this humanity, but strive to destroy one another. Precisely he who is folkishly oriented has the most sacred duty, each within his own denomination, to see to it that God's will is not simply talked about outwardly, but that God's will is also fulfilled and God's labor not ravished. Because God's will once gave men their form, their being, and their faculties. Who destroys His work thereby declares war on the
creation of the Lord, the divine will.
Therefore, let everyone be active, and best of all each in his own denomination,
and let everyone feel it his first and most sacred duty to oppose him who, in his activity by word or deed, breaks out of the framework of his own creed and seeks to pry his way into the other. For the struggle against the essential peculiarities of a denomination within our present German religious division leads inevitably to a war of extermination between both denominations.
pg. 828:
(. . .)
I do not hesitate to declare that I see in those who today try to draw the folkish movement into the crisis of religious controversies worse enemies of my nation than I do in any internationally oriented Communist.
pg. 829:
(. . .)
The most believing Protestant could stand in the ranks of our movement next to the most believing Catholic, without ever having to come into the slightest conflict of conscience with his religious convictions. The great common struggle which both carried on against the destroyers of Aryan humanity had, on the contrary, taught them mutual respect and esteem.
And this notwithstanding the fact that, in those very years, the movement fought most bitterly against the Center, not, of course, on religious, but exclusively on questions of national, racial, and economic policy. Success proved us right then, just as today it proves the know-it-alls wrong.
pgs. 888-9:
The goal of a German foreign policy of today must be the preparation of the reconquest of freedom for tomorrow.
Moreover, one thing above all must be kept in mind as a directive: A nation's chance of reconquering its independence is not absolutely bound up with the integrity of a Slate territory, but rather with the existence of a never so small remnant of this nation and State which, having the necessary freedom, has it in its power to be not only the bearer of the spiritual communion of the entire nationality, but also the pre-parer of the military struggle for freedom.
pg. 891:
(. . .)
For oppressed countries will not be brought back into the bosom of a common Reich by means of fiery protests, but by a mighty sword.
To forge this sword is the task of the domestic political leadership of a people; to guard the work of forging and to seek comrades in arms is the task of the foreign-policy leadership.
pg. 901:
Experience, however, should now have taught us that alliances for the achievement of negative goals suffer from internal weaknesses. National fates are solidly welded together only through a perspective of a common triumph, in the sense of common gains, conquests, in short, a joint expansion of power.
pg. 902:
Because we must at last become entirely clear about this: the German people's irreconcilable mortal enemy is and remains France.
pgs. 947-50:
The frontiers of the year 1914 signify nothing at all for the future of the German nation. They embodied neither a protection in the past, nor would they embody strength for the future. The German nation will neither maintain its internal integrity through them, nor will its sustenance be guaranteed by them, nor do these frontiers appear appropriate or even satisfactory from a military viewpoint, nor, finally, can they improve the relation in which, at the moment, we find ourselves with respect to the other world powers, or rather, the real world powers. The distance to England will not be shortened, the size of the Union not achieved; no, France will not even experience a material decrease in her world political importance.
Only one thing would be certain : even assuming a favorable outcome, such an attempt at re-establishing the frontiers of 1914 would lead to an additional bleeding of our national body, to an extent that no worth-while blood reserve would be available for national life and for decisions and actions which would really insure the nation's future. On the contrary, in the intoxication of such a shallow success every added posing of goals would be the more readily abandoned, once the 'national honor* had been restored and some doors reopened, at least for a time, to commercial development.
As opposed to this, we National Socialists must cling unflinchingly to our foreign-policy aims, that is to guarantee the German nation the soil and territory to which it is entitled an this earth. And this is the only action which, before God and our German posterity, would seem to justify an investment of blood : before God, since we are placed in this world on condition of an eternal struggle for daily bread, as beings to whom nothing shall be given and who owe their position as lords of the earth only to the genius and courage with which they know how to struggle for and defend it: before our German posterity, however, in so far as we spill no citizen's blood except that out of it a thousand others are bequeathed to posterity. The soil and territory on which a race of German peasants will some day be able to beget sons sanction the investment of the sons of today, and will some day acquit the responsible statesmen of blood and guilt and national sacrifice, even though they be persecuted by their contemporaries.
I must attack most sharply those folkish scribbler souls who claim to see a 'breach of sacred human rights' in such an acquisition of territory, and who consequently direct their effusions against it. One really never knows who stands behind one of those fellows. It is only certain that the confusion which they are able to create is desired by and opportune to our national enemies. By such an attitude they wantonly aid from within in undermining and cutting the ground from under our nation's only means of properly standing up for its life necessities. For no nation possesses even a single square kilometer of soil and territory on this earth because of a superior will, let alone a superior right. Just as the German frontiers are frontiers of chance and temporary frontiers in the day's passing political struggles, so are the frontiers of other nations' domain of life. And so, just as the formation of our earth's surface can seem unalterable as granite only to the thoughtless nitwit, but in truth always amounts only to a seeming point of calm in a running development, created by the mighty forces of nature in a constant process of becoming, perhaps tomorrow already, to experience destruction and metamorphosis as a result of greater forces, such, too, are frontiers of the domain of life in the existence of nations.
State frontiers are man-made and can be altered by man.
The reality of a nation having managed a disproportionate acquisition of territory is no superior obligation for its eternal recognition. It proves at most the might of the conqueror and the weakness of the victim. And, moreover, this might alone makes right. If the German people today, penned into an impossible area, face a wretched future, this is as little Fate's command as its rejection would constitute a snub to Fate. Just as little as some superior power has promised another nation more soil and territory than the German, or would be insulted by the fact of this unjust division of territory. Just as our forefathers did not get the land on which we are living today as a gift from Heaven, but had to conquer it by risking their lives, so no folkish grace but only the might of a triumphant sword will in the future assign us territory, and with it life for our nation.
Much as we all today recognize the necessity for a reckoning with France, it will remain largely ineffective if our foreign-policy aim is restricted thereto. It has and will retain significance if it provides the rear cover for an enlargement of our national domain of life in Europe. For we will find this question's solution not in colonial acquisitions, but exclusively in the winning of land for settlement which increases the area of the motherland itself, and thereby not only keeps the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of origin, but insures to the total area those advantages deriving from its united magnitude.
The folkish movement must be not the attorney for other nations, but the vanguard fighter of its own. Otherwise it is superfluous, and especially has no right to beef about the past. For then it is acting like the past. Much as the old German policy was improperly determined from dynastic viewpoints, equally little must the future be governed by dreamy folkish cosmopolitanism. Above all, however, we are not protective police for the well-known 'poor little nations,' but soldiers of our own nation. We National Socialists, however, must go further: the right to soil and territory can become a duty if decline seems to be in store for a great nation unless it extends its territory. Even more especially if what is involved is not some little negro people or other, but the German mother of all life, which has given its cultural picture to the contemporary world.
Germany will be either a world power or will not be at all.
To be a world power, however, it requires that size which nowadays gives its necessary importance to such a power, and which gives life to its citizens.
pgs. 951-3:
Fate itself seems to seek to give us a tip at this point. In the surrender of Russia to bolshevism, the Russian people was robbed of that intelligentsia which theretofore produced and guaranteed its State stability. For the organization of a Russian State structure was not the result of Russian Slavdom's State-political capacity, but rather a wonderful example of the State-building activity of the German element in an inferior race. Thus have innumerable mighty empires of the earth been created. Inferior nations with German organizers and lords as leaders have more than once expanded into powerful State structures, and endured as long as the racial nucleus of the constructive State-race maintained itself. For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its superior strata of leaders.
Today it is uprooted and obliterated almost without a trace. The Jєω has replaced it. Impossible as it is for the Russians alone to shake off the yoke of the Jєωs through their own strength, it is equally impossible in the long run for the Jєωs to maintain the mighty empire. Jєωry itself is not an organizing element, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian Empire, once so powerful, is now ripe for collapse; and the end of Jєωιѕн dominion in Russia will also be the end of the Russian State itself. We have been chosen by Fate to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the most powerful substantiation of the correctness of the folkish theory of race.
Our task, the mission of the National Socialist movement, however, is to bring our own nation to such political insight as will make it see its future goal fulfilled, not by an intoxicating impression of a new Alexandrian campaign, but rather by the industrious labor of the German plow which needs only to be given land by the sword.
pg. 959:
One should not now raise the objection that an alliance with Russia would not immediately imply a war, or, if it does, that it might be fundamentally prepared for. No.
An alliance whose aim does not comprise a plan for war is senseless and worthless. One mak
Topic: Excerpts from Mein Kampf (Read 1290 times)