Mein Kampf

Adolf Hitler (1925-1926)

 

THE PRIMACY OF RACE

 

If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

 

History furnishes us with innumerable instances that prove this law. It shows, with a startling clarity, that whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central and South America. In these latter countries the immigrants--who mainly belonged to the Latin races—mated with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.

 

In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following:

(a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap.

 

The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged….

 

All that we admire in the world to-day, its science, its art, its technical developments and discoveries, are the products of the creative activities of a few peoples, and it may be true that their first beginnings must be attributed to one race. The maintenance of civilization is wholly dependent on such peoples. Should they perish, all that makes this earth beautiful will descend with them into the grave…..

 

All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.

 

The most profound cause of such a decline is to be found in the fact that the people ignored the principle that all culture depends on men, and not the reverse. In other words, in order to preserve a certain culture, the type of manhood that creates such a culture must be preserved. But such a preservation goes hand-in-hand with the inexorable law that it is the strongest and the best who must triumph and that they have the right to endure….

 

If we divide mankind into three categories--founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture--the Aryan alone can be considered as representing the first category. It was he who laid the groundwork and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture. Only the shape and colour of such structures are to be attributed to the individual characteristics of the various nations. It is the Aryan who has furnished the great building-stones and plans for the edifices of all human progress….

 

The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration conditioned thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient civilizations; for it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a characteristic of pure racial blood. In this world everything that is not of sound racial stock is like chaff….

 

A State which, in an epoch of racial adulteration, devotes itself to the duty of preserving the best elements of its racial stock must one day become ruler of the Earth.

 

ANTI-SEMITISM

 

The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Aryan…. [D]espite the intellectual powers with which they are apparently endowed, have not a culture--certainly not a culture of their own. The culture which the Jew enjoys to-day is the product of the work of others and this product is debased in the hands of the Jew.

 

In order to form a correct judgment of the place which the Jew holds in relation to the whole problem of human civilization, we must bear in mind the essential fact that there never has been any Jewish art and consequently that nothing of this kind exists to-day. We must realize that especially in those two royal domains of art, namely architecture and music, the Jew has done no original creative work. When the Jew comes to producing something in the field of art he merely bowdler-izes something already in existence or simply steals the intellectual word, of others. The Jew essentially lacks those qualities which are characteristic of those creative races that are the founders of civilization….

 

On this first and fundamental lie, the purpose of which is to make people believe that Jewry is not a nation but a religion, other lies are subsequently based. One of those further lies, for example, is in connection with the language spoken by the Jew. For him language is not an instrument for the expression of his inner thoughts but rather a means of cloaking them. When talking French his thoughts are Jewish and when writing German rhymes he only gives expression to the character of his own race.

 

As long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples he is forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not. But the moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew it would have to learn some other language (Esperanto, for example) so that by this means the Jew could dominate all the more easily….

 

The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples. The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people.

 

That is why the Jew systematically endeavors to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.

 

In the field of politics he now begins to replace the idea of democracy by introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the masses organized under the Marxist banners he has found a weapon which makes it possible for him to discard democracy, so as to subjugate and rule in a dictatorial fashion by the aid of brute force. He is systematically working in two ways to bring about this revolution. These ways are the economic and the political respectively.

 

Aided by international influences, he forms a ring of enemies around those nations which have proved themselves too sturdy for him in withstanding attacks from within. He would like to force them into war and then, if it should be necessary to his plans, he will unfurl the banners of revolt even while the troops are actually fighting at the front.

 

Economically he brings about the destruction of the State by a systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so costly that they are taken out of the hands of the State and then submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically he works to withdraw from the State its means of subsistence, inasmuch as he undermines the foundations of national resistance and defense, destroys the confidence which the people have in their Government, reviles the past and its history and drags everything national down into the gutter.

 

Culturally his activity consists in bowdlerizing art, literature and the theatre, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn, overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low mentality.

 

Of religion he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as antiquated prejudices and thus a systematic attack is made to undermine those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.

 

Hence it is that at the present time the Jew is the great agitator for the complete destruction of Germany. Whenever we read of attacks against Germany taking place in any part of the world the Jew is always the instigator. In peace-time, as well as during the War, the Jewish-Marxist stock-exchange Press systematically stirred up hatred against Germany, until one State after another abandoned its neutrality and placed itself at the service of the world coalition, even against the real interests of its own people.

 

The Jewish way of reasoning thus becomes quite clear. The Bolshevization of Germany, that is to say, the extermination of the patriotic and national German intellectuals, thus making it possible to force German Labour to bear the yoke of international Jewish finance--that is only the overture to the movement for expanding Jewish power on a wider scale and finally subjugating the world to its rule. As has so often happened in history, Germany is the chief pivot of this formidable struggle. If our people and our State should fall victims to these oppressors of the nations, lusting after blood and money, the whole earth would become the prey of that hydra. Should Germany be freed from its grip, a great menace for the nations of the world would thereby be eliminated.

 

PROPAGANDA AND MASS RALLIES

 

The task of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of individuals, but in directing the masses toward certain facts, events, necessities, etc., whose significance is to be brought to their attention.

 

The essential skill consists in doing this so well that you convince people about the reality of a fact, about the necessity of an event, about the correctness of something necessary, etc…. You always have to appeal to the emotions and far less to the so-called intellect….

 

The art of propaganda lies in sensing the emotional temper of the broad masses, so that you, in psychologically effective form, can catch their attention and move their hearts….

 

The attention span of the masses very short, their understanding limited; they easily forget. For that reason all effective propaganda has to concentrate on very few points and drive the home through simple slogans, until even the simplest can grasp what you have in mind. As soon as you give up this principle and become too complex, you will lose your effectiveness, because the masses cannot digest and retain what you have offered. You thereby weaken your case and in the end lose it altogether.

 

The large the scope of your case, the more psychologically correct must be the method of your presentation….

 

The task of propaganda lies not in weighing right and wrong, but in driving home your own point of view. You cannot objectively explore the facts that favor others and present them in doctrinaire sincerity to the masses. You have to push relentlessly your own case….

 

Even the most brilliant propaganda will not produce the desired results unless it follows this fundamental rule: You must stick to limiting yourself to essentials and repeat them endlessly. Persistence on this point, as in so many other cases in the world, is the first and most important precondition for success….

 

Propaganda does not exist to furnish interesting diversions to blasé young dandies, but to convince above all the masses.  In their clumsiness they always require a long lead before they are ready to take notice. Only by thousandfold repetition will the simplest concepts stick in their memories.

 

No variation of you presentation should change the content of you propaganda; you always have to come to the same conclusion. You may want to highlight your slogans from various sides, but at the end you always have to reaffirm it. Only consistent and uniform propaganda will succeed….

 

Every advertisement, whether in business or politics, derives its success from its persistence and uniformity….

 

The mass meeting is … necessary because an incipient supporter of a new political movement will feel lonely and anxiously isolated. He needs at the start a sense of a larger community which among most people produces vitality and courage. The same man as member of a military company or battalion and surrounded by his comrades will more lightheartedly join an attack than if he were all by himself. In a crowd he feels more sheltered, even if reality were a thousandfold against him.

 

The sense of community in a mass demonstration not only empowers the individual, but also promotes an esprit de corps. The person who in his business or workshop is the first to represent a new political creed is likely to be exposed to heavy discrimination. He needs the reassurance that comes from the conviction of being a member and a fighter in a large comprehensive organization. The sense of this organization comes first to him in a mass demonstration. When he for the first time goes from a petty workshop or from a large factory, where he feels insignificant, to a mass demonstration surrounded by thousands and thousands of like-minded fellows—when he as a seeker is gripped by the intoxicating surge of enthusiasm among three or four thousand others—when the visible success and the consensus of thousands of others prove the correctness of his new political creed and for the first time arouse doubts about his previous political convictions—then he submits to the miraculous influence of what we call “mass suggestion.” The will, the yearning, and also the power of thousands of fellow citizens now fill every individual. The man who full of doubts and uncertain enters such a gathering, leaves it inwardly strengthened; he has become a member of a community.

 

LEBENSRAUM

 

A people gains its freedom of existence only by occupying a sufficiently large space on earth….

 

If the National Socialist movement really wants to achieve a hallowed mission in history for our people, it must, in painful awareness of its position in the world, boldly and methodically fight against the aimlessness and incapacity which have hitherto guided the foreign policy of the German people. It must then, without respect for “tradition” and prejudice, find the courage to rally the German people to a forceful advance on the road which leads from their present cramped living space to new territories. In this manner they will be liberated from the danger of perishing or being enslaved in service to others.

 

The National Socialist movement must try to end the disproportion between our numerous population and its limited living space, the source of our food as well as the base of our power—between our historic past and the hopelessness of our present impotence….

 

The demand for restoring the boundaries of 1914 is a political nonsense with consequences so huge as to make it appear a crime –quite apart from the fact that our pre-war boundaries were anything but logical. They neither united all people of German nationality nor served strategic-political necessity….

 

In the light of this fact we National Socialists must resolutely stick to our foreign policy goals, namely to secure for the German people the territorial base to which they are entitled. This is the only goal which before God and our Germany posterity justifies shedding our blood….

 

Just as our forebears did not receive the soil of which we live as a gift from heaven—they had to risk their lives for it—so in future we will not secure the living space for our people by divine grace, but by the might of the victorious sword.

 

However much all of us recognize the necessity of a reckoning with France, it would remain ineffectual if we thereby limited the scope of our foreign policy. It makes sense only if we consider it as a rear-guard action for expanding our living space elsewhere in Europe….

 

If we speak today about gaining territory in Europe, we think primarily of Russia and its border states.