MY

STRUGGLE

ADOLF

HITLER

PATERNOSTER

LIBRARY

22500690179

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MY STRUGGLE

It would not be exaggerating to say that no more important autobiography than this has been pub¬ lished since the War , and certainly no autobio¬ graphy has been issued for decades over which controversy has raged so bitterly. Whatever one’s political views may be , it is a book every¬ one should read , for it reveals the forces and cir¬ cumstances which went to make a remarkable character , whose intense belief in his ideals won over a mighty nation , and changed the course of history.

The News Chronicle called it “an astonishing book ” ; the Evening News said : “It commands attention .” Morning Post : “We recommend a close study of this book .” The Evening Standard said : “The whole of the political Hitler is in these brutally candid pages .” The Yorkshire Post said : “The book should be extremely valuable in enabling English readers to obtain a general conception of Hitler’s theories .” Major F. Yeats-Brown wrote : “I hope My Struggle will be published in a cheap edition

F rnntis piece]

MY STRUGGLE

by Adolf Hitler

2jth Thousand

NUMBER II

THE PATERNOSTER LIBRARY

THE PATERNOSTER LIBRARY

(Hurst eb* Blackett, Ltd.)

Second Impression	• • •	1933
Third ,,	» • •	1933
Fourth „	. . .	1933
Fifth	.	1933
Sixth „		1933
Seventh „	.	. November, 1933
Eighth	* • »	1933
Ninth ,,	• • •	. January, 1934
Tenth „	• • •	T934
Cheap Edition	• • •	. October, 1935
»»	•	. December, 1935
% »	.	. March, 1936
>>		. June, 1936
yy	.	. September, 1936
yy	Aut	. December, 1936

Made and Printed in Great Britain for Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., Pater¬ noster House, London, E.C.4, at The Gainsborough Press, St. Albans, Fisher, Knight & Co., Ltd 1936

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

On November 9th, 1923, the fourth year from its start, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was dissolved and prohibited throughout the Reich.

On April ist, 1924, under the sentence of the National Courts of Justice in Munich, I was condemned to detention in the fortress of Landsberg am Lech.

This gave me, after years of uninterrupted labour, my first opportunity of attacking a work which many were asking for, and which I myself considered profit¬ able for the Movement. So I have decided to explain the aims of our Movement in a book and also to draw a picture of how it developed. There is more to be learned from it than from any purely doctrinaire treatise.

It has also given me an opportunity of describing myself, as far as it will help me to make the volume comprehensible, and to destroy the evil legendary fabrications of the Jewish press about me.

In this work I turn not to strangers, but to those adherents of the Movement who belong to it in their hearts and wish for enlightenment regarding it.

I know that fewer people are won over by the written than the spoken word, and that the growth of every great Movement on earth is due to great speakers and not to great writers.

Nevertheless, in order to produce equality and unity in defence of any doctrine, its eternal principles must be laid down. May this book, therefore, be the building stone which I contribute to the joint work.

To-day, the Party stands erect throughout the Empire, stronger and more firmly established than ever before.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

The Translator has endeavoured, in his abridgment of Herr Hitler’s work, to include all the sentiments and ideals of government which the Author expresses in his complete work.

His passionate wish for the regeneration of his race pervades the whole of the book, and he has succeeded in inspiring the youth of Germany with his ideals. As far as can be judged from the book itself, Herr Hitler looks to the Movement to make the German nation call for the kind of government which he considers to be the right one, and to eliminate, if necessary by force, all elements which may try to oppose it.

Herr Hitler is more explicit about the future of foreign policy than about domestic administration ; at the time of writing his book perhaps he regarded his own constructive work as being chiefly to set Germany going along the right lines and to keep her there,

CONTENTS

PART ONE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. MY HOME . . . . . . . . 17

II. MY STUDIES AND STRUGGLES IN VIENNA 20

III. POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS RESULTING

FROM MY TIME IN VIENNA . . 37

IV. MUNICH . . . . . . . . . . 6l

V. THE WORLD WAR . . . . . . 73

VI. WAR PROPAGANDA . . . . . . 80

VII. THE REVOLUTION . . . . . . 85

VIII. THE START OF MY POLITICAL LIFE . . 93

IX. THE GERMAN WORKERS’ PARTY . . 98

X. THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF COLLAPSE

IN THE OLD EMPIRE . . . . 102

XI. NATION AND RAGE . . . . . . 120

XII. THE FIRST PERIOD IN THE DEVELOP¬ MENT OF THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMAN WORKERS’ PARTY . . 1 32

PART TWO

I. WORLD THEORY AND PARTY . . . . 1 47

II. THE STATE . . . . . . . . 1 52

III. CITIZENS AND SUBJECTS OF THE STATE 1 74

IV. PERSONALITY AND THE CONCEPTION OF

THE NATIONAL STATE . . . . 1 76

V. WORLD THEORY AND ORGANIZATION l8l

VI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE EARLY DAYS :

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORATORY . . 1 86

VII. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE RED FORGES 1 93

VIII. THE STRONG MAN IS STRONGEST WHEN

ALONE . . . . . . . . 203

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

• IX.	THOUGHTS ON THE MEANING AND ORGANIZATION OF THE SOCIALIST WORKERS . . . . . . . . 207
X.	THE SHAM OF FEDERALISM . . . . 222
XI.	PROPAGANDA AND ORGANIZATION . . 232
XII.	THE TRADE UNION QUESTION . . 237
XIII.	GERMAN POLICY OF ALLIANCE AFTER THE WAR . . . . . . . . 24I
XIV.	POLICY IN THE ORIENT . . . . 253
XV.	EMERGENCY DEFENCE AS A RIGHT . . 263
INDEX	281 • * •• •• •• •• •• ^ A-/ A.

PART ONE

MY STRUGGLE

CHAPTER I

MY HOME

IT stands me in good stead to-day that Fate decided that Braunau on the Inn should be my birthplace. That little town lies on the frontier between the two German States, the re-union of which we younger ones regard as a work worthy of accomplishment by all the means in our power.

German-Austria will have to return to the great German Motherland, but not for economic reasons. No, no ! Even if re-union, looked at from that point of view, were a matter of indifference — nay, even if it were actually injurious — it would still have to come. Common blood should belong to a common Reich. The German people have no right to dabble in a colonial policy as long as they are unable to gather their own sons into a common State. Not till the confines of the Reich include every single German, and are certain of being able to nourish him, can there be a moral right for Germany to acquire territory abroad whilst her people are in need. Thus it comes about that the little frontier town is to me the symbol of a great enterprise.

Are we not the same as all other Germans ? Do we not all belong together ?

This problem began to seethe in my childish brain. In answer to my shy questions, I was obliged with secret envy to accept the fact that all Germans were not so fortunate as to be members of Bismarck’s Empire.

B

1.7

1 8

MY STRUGGLE

I did not want to become an official. Neither “talking to” nor “serious” argument made any dif¬ ference to my reluctance. I did not want to be an official, and refused to be one. Any attempt, by quoting my father’s examples, to arouse love or keen¬ ness for that calling only had the contrary effect. I hated and was bored by the idea of having to sit tied to an office, of not being master of my own time, of spending the whole of my life filling up forms.

Now, when I review the effect on myself of all those years, I see two facts which stand out most con¬ spicuously : (i) I became a Nationalist, and (ii) I learned to grasp and understand history in its true sense.

The old Austria was a State of many nationalities.

In comparatively early youth I had an opportunity of taking part in a struggle of nationality in the old Austria. We had a school society, and expressed our sentiments with cornflowers and the black-red-gold colours, and there was cheering, and we sang “ Deutch - land über Alles ” in preference to the Austrian Kaiserlied \ in spite of warning and punishments. Thus the youth were being educated politically at an age when a member of a so-called national State usually knows little about his nationality except its language. Even then I obviously could not be counted amongst the lukewarm. I soon became a fanatical German Nationalist — not, however, the same thing as con¬ ceived by that Party to-day.

This development progressed very rapidly in me, so that by the time I was fifteen I had understood the difference between dynastic “patriotism” and popular “nationalism” ; I knew far more about the latter.

Did not we boys already know that this Austrian State had and could have no love for us Germans ?

Our historical knowledge of the methods of the House of Habsburg was corroborated by what we saw every day. In the North and the South the poison of

MY STRUGGLE

19

the foreign races ate into the body of our nationality, and even Vienna was visibly becoming less and less a German city. The Royal House were becoming Czech in every possible way ; and it was the hand of the goddess of eternal justice and inexorable retribution that caused the most deadly enemy of Germanism in Austria, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, to fall by the very bullets which he had himself helped to mould. And he was the chief patron of the Movement, working from above to make Austria a Slav State !

The germ of the future world war, and indeed of the general collapse, lay in the disastrous connection of the young German Empire with the Austrian shadow State.

In the course of this book I shall have to deal exhaustively with this problem. It is enough to state here that from my earliest youth I was convinced that Austria’s destruction was a necessary condition for the security of the German race, and, moreover, that the feeling of nationality is in no way identical with dynastic patriotism ; also that the House of Habsburg was set upon doing harm to the German race.

Even then I perceived the deductions from this realization : intense love for my German- Austrian home and deep hatred against the Austrian State.

The choice of a profession had to be decided on quicker than I had expected. Poverty and stern reality forced me to make a rapid decision. My family’s small means were nearly exhausted by my mother’s severe illness ; the pension which came to me as an orphan was not enough to live on, so that I was forced to earn my living somehow myself.

With a valise full of clothes and linen I went to Vienna full of determination. I hoped to ward off fate, as my father had succeeded in doing 50 years before. I wanted to become something — but in any case, not an official.

CHAPTER II

MY STUDIES AND STRUGGLES IN VIENNA

IN Vienna amazing riches and degrading poverty were mixed together in violent contrast. In the central parts of the city one felt the pulse of the Empire, with its 25 millions, with all the dangerous charm of that State of many nationalities. The dazzling bril¬ liancy of the Court attracted the wealth and intelligence of the rest of the Empire like a magnet, to which was added the strong centralizing policy of the Habsburg Monarchy.

This offered the only possibility of holding that hash of nations together. The result was an extraordinary concentration of all authority in the Capital.

Moreover, Vienna was not only politically and intellectually the centre of the old Danube Monarchy, but it was also the centre of administration. Besides the host of high officers, State officials, artists and pro¬ fessors, there was a still greater host of workers, and crushing poverty side by side with the wealth of the aristocracy and merchant class. Thousands of unem¬ ployed hung about the palaces of the Ringstrasse, and below that via triumphalis those who had no homes crowded in the dinginess and filth of the canals.

Social questions could hardly be studied in any German town better than in Vienna. But let there be no mistake. This studying cannot be done from above. No one who is not caught up in the coils of this poisonous snake can get to know its poison fangs ; the others exhibit nothing but superficial chatter and false senti¬ mentality. Both do harm. The first because it can never penetrate to the kernal of the question, the second

20

MY STRUGGLE

21

because it misses it. I do not know which is the more desolating : to ignore the social needs, as do most of the lucky ones and those who have risen by their own efforts, or the supercilious and intrusively tactless, though always kindly, condescension of certain fashion¬ able ladies, who are by way of sympathizing with the people. These certainly sin more from lack of instinct than they can possibly understand. Thus they are astonished to find that the results of their readiness for social work are always nil and often produce violent antagonism ; it is held up as a proof of the people’s ingratitude.

Such minds refuse to understand that social work is beside the point and, above all, must not look for gratitude, since it is not a question of distributing favours, but of restoring rights.

I perceived even then that in this case a twofold method was the only way to improve matters ; namely, a deep feeling of social responsibility for creating better principles for our development, combined with ruthless determination to destroy excrescences which could not be remedied.

Just as Nature concentrates not on maintaining what exists, but on cultivating new growth in order to carry on the species, so in human life we may not exalt the existing evil, which, owing to the nature of man, is impossible in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but assure better methods for future development from the start.

During my struggle for existence in Vienna I per¬ ceived clearly that the social task may never consist of welfare work, which is both ridiculous and useless, but rather in removing the deep-seated mistakes in the organization of our economic and cultural life, which are bound to end in degradation of the individual, or at least may lead him astray.

Since the Austrian State practically ignored social

22

MY STRUGGLE

legislation altogether, its inability to abolish evil excrescences loomed large before one’s eyes.

I do not know what most appalled me at that period — the economic misery of our fellow-workers, their moral crudity, or the low level of their spiritual development.

Does our bourgeoisie not often rise in moral indig¬ nation when it learns from the mouth of some wretched tramp that he does not care whether he is a German or not, that it is all the same to him so long as he has enough to keep him alive ? They at once protest loudly at such want of “national pride” ; and their horror at such sentiments finds strong expression.

But how many really ask themselves why they themselves have a better sentiment ? How many understand the many reminders of the greatness of the Fatherland, their nation, in all domains of cultural and artistic life, which combine to give them legitimate pride in being members of a nation so highly favoured ? How many of them are aware how greatly pride in the Fatherland depends on knowledge of its greatness in all these domains ?

I then learned to understand quickly and com¬ pletely something which I had never been aware of before :

The question of “nationalizing” a people is first and foremost one of creating healthy social conditions as a foundation for the possibility of educating the individual. For only when a man has learned through education and schooling to know the cultural, economic, and above all the political greatness of his own Father- land can he, and will he, gain that inner pride in being permitted to be a member of such a nation. I can fight only for what I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I, at any rate, know about.

Now that my interest in social questions was

MY STRUGGLE

23

awakened, I began to study them thoroughly. A new and unknown world revealed itself to me.

In the years 1909-10 I had so far improved my condition as not to have to earn my daily bread as an assistant worker. I was working independently as a draughtsman and painter in water-colours.

The psyche of the mass of the people is not receptive of anything savouring of half-measures and weakness.

Like a woman whose sensibilities are influenced less by abstract reasoning than by an undefinable longing governed by feeling, for the strength which completes what is to be done, and who would rather bow to the strong man than dominate the weakling, the people love a ruler more than a suppliant and feel more inwardly satisfied by doctrines which suffer no rival, than by an admission of liberal freedom ; they have very little idea how to use it and easily feel forsaken. They are as little conscious of the shame of being spiritually terrorized as of an abuse of their freedom as human beings, calculated to drive them into revolt ; nor are they aware of any intrinsic wrongness in the teaching. They only see the ruthless strength and brutality of its determined utterances, to which they always bow in the end.

If a doctrine, superior in truth but ruthless in practice, is set up against Social Democracy, that doctrine will win, however severe the struggle.

Before two years had passed the doctrine of Social Democracy became clear to me, as also its use as a practical instrument.

Since Social Democracy well knows the value of strength from its own experience, it usually attacks those in whom it scents something of that element, which is, moreover, so rare. On the other hand, it extols any weakling on the opposing side, at first cautiously, then more boldly, according as his qualities are recognized or imagined.

24

MY STRUGGLE

It fears a powerless, purposeless nature less than strong will, even though its mentality may be indif¬ ferent.

It knows how to make it seem that it alone has the secret of peace and tranquillity, whilst it cautiously but unflinchingly conquers one position after another, either by silent pressure or by downright robbery at moments when public attention is being directed to other matters, is unwilling to be disturbed or thinks the affair too paltry to call for much attention or for it to be advisable to irritate the dangerous adversary afresh.

These are tactics calculated absolutely on the sum of human weakness, and their result is a mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas.

Weak natures have to be told that it is a case of “to be or not to be”.

Intimidation in workshops and factories, at meetings and mass demonstrations, is always accompanied by success so long as it is not met by an equally powerful force of intimidation.

Poverty, which overtook the workers sooner or later, drove them into the camp of Social Democracy.

Since on countless occasions the bourgeoisie, not only most stupidly but most immorally made common cause against the most legitimate of human demands, often without getting or expecting profit for them¬ selves thereby, workmen, even the most disciplined, were driven out of the Trades Union organization into politics.

By the time that I was twenty years old I had learned to distinguish between the Trades Union as an instrument for defending the social rights of the employee and for fighting for better living conditions for him, and the Union as a party instrument in the political class ware

MY STRUGGLE

25

The fact that Social Democracy realized the immense importance of the Trades Union movement gave it the instrument and assured its success ; the bourgeoisie failed to realize it and so lost their political position. They thought that contemptuous refusal to let it develop logically would give it its quietus and would really force it into illogical paths. For it is absurd and also untrue that the Trades Union movement is essentially hostile to the Fatherland ; the opposite is the more correct view. If Trades Union action aims at improving the condition of a class which is one of the pillars of the nation, and succeeds in doing so, its action is not against the Fatherland or the State, but is “national” in the truest sense of the word. In that way it helps to forge social principles, without which general national education is unthinkable. It earns the highest merit, for, by eradicating social cankers, it attacks the causes of disease, both mental and bodily, and so adds to the general welfare of the nation.

As far as essentials are concerned, the question is really a superfluous one.

So long as there are amongst employers men with little social understanding or wrong ideas of justice and fairness, it is not only the right, but the duty of their employees, who, after all, form a part of our population, to protect the interests of the whole against the greed or unreasonableness of the individual ; for to keep loyalty and faith alive in the mass of the people is to the nation’s interests, just as much as keeping them healthy.

If unsocial or unworthy treatment of men provokes resistance, then, until the lawful judicial authorities are prepared to do away with the evil, this struggle can only be decided by the side which is strongest. It is evident, moreover, that the individual employer, sup¬ ported by the concentrated strength of his business, may have to face the united body of employees, if he is not to be compelled to give up any hope of victory from the very start.

26

MY STRUGGLE

In the course of a few decades, under the expert hand of Social Democracy, the Trades Union movement grew from being the means for protecting the social rights of man into an instrument for laying national economics in ruins. The interests of the workers were not going to count at all with the promoters of this object. For in politics the use of economic pressure always permits extortion, whenever one side is suf¬ ficiently unscrupulous and the other has sufficient stupid, sheepish patience.

By the beginning of this century the Trades Union movement had long ceased to serve its earlier purpose. With each succeeding year it fell more and more under the influence of social democratic politics and ended by being used merely as the battering ram for the class war.

Instead of opposing this by taking the offensive, the bourgeoisie submitted to being pressed and harried, and ended by adopting utterly inadequate measures, which, being taken too late, were ineffective and were easily repulsed owing to their weakness. So all really remained as it was, but the discontent was more serious than before.

The “free Trades Union” lowered over the political horizon and over each man’s life like a threatening storm-cloud.

It was one of the most terrible instruments of intimidation against security and national indepen¬ dence, the solidity of the State and individual freedom.

It was, above all, that which turned the idea of democracy into a repellant and derisory phrase, brought shame to liberty and mocked at brotherhood in the words : “If you won’t join us we will crack your skull for you”.

I learned then something about this “friend of man”. As years went on my opinions widened and deepened, but I never found reason to alter them.

MY STRUGGLE

27

As I obtained more insight into the externals of Social Democracy, my longing increased to understand the inner kernel of its doctrines.

The official literature of the Party was nearly use¬ less for my purpose. When dealing with economic questions its assertions and arguments are incorrect, and as regards the political aim they are fallacious. Hence I felt intensely repelled by the modern petti¬ fogging methods of expression and writing.

Finally I learned the connection between this

doctrine of destruction and the character of a race

*

which until then was almost unknown to me.

Understanding of the Jews is the only key to com¬ prehension of the inner, and therefore real, aims of Social Democracy.

Comprehension of that race is to raise the veil of false conceptions regarding the objects and meaning of this party, and the nonsense of Marxism rises grimacing out of the fog and mist of social phrases.

It is difficult, if not impossible, today, for me to say when the word “Jew55 first began to suggest special ideas to me. I have no recollection of having even heard the word at home during my father’s lifetime. I think the old gentleman would have seen it as an antiquated culture, if he mentioned the term in any special way. His views during his life were more or less those of a citizen of the world, and were combined in him with a strong feeling of nationality which had its effect on me as well.

In school, too, I found no reason leading me to alter the picture I had received at home.

At the Realschule I got to know a Jewish boy, whom we all treated with much consideration ; but having learned something by various experiences with regard to his reticence we did not particularly trust him.

It was not till I was fourteen or fifteen years old that I frequently met the word “Jew”, partly in connection

28

MY STRUGGLE

with political talk. I then took a slight dislike to it, and could not escape an uncomfortable feeling which came over me when religious differences were discussed in my presence. At that time I saw the question in no other aspect.

Linz possessed very few Jews. Throughout the centuries they had become European in externals and like other people ; in fact, I looked on them as Germans. The wrongness of this conception was not clear to me, since the only distinguishing mark I saw in them was their unfamiliar religion. As I thought they were persecuted on that account, my aversion to remarks in their disfavour almost grew into abhorrence. Of the existence of deliberate Jewish hostility I had no conception.

Then I arrived in Vienna.

Being confused by the mass of architectural impres¬ sions and crushed by the hardness of my own lot, I was at first unaware of the stratifications of the people within that immense city. Although Vienna then counted something like two hundred thousand Jews aomngst its population of two millions, I failed to see them. During the first weeks my eyes and mind were unable to take in the rush of values and ideas. Not till I gradually became calmer and the confused images began to get clearer did I obtain a deeper view of this new world and come up against the Jewish question.

I will not say that the way in which I was to make acquaintance with them was very pleasant to me. I still saw Jewry as a religion, and therefore, for reasons of human tolerance, I still disliked attacking them on religious grounds. Thus I considered that the tone, especially that adopted by the anti-semitic Press in Vienna, unworthy of the cultural traditions of a great nation. I was oppressed by the memory of certain events in the Middle Ages, which I would not care to see . repeated. £ Since the newspapers in question had not a high reputation in general — how this came about

MY STRUGGLE

29

I never knew then exactly — I regarded them more as a product of jealous rage than the result of genuine, if wrong-headed, opinion.

My own opinions were fortified by what seemed to me the infinitely more dignified forms in which the really great Press replied to those attacks or silently ignored them altogether — which occurred to me as being even more worthy of respect.

I read the so-called world-press diligently {Neue Freie Presse , Wiener Tageblatt , etc.). I was constantly repelled by the unworthy way in which these papers curried favour with the Court. Scarcely any event at the Hofburg failed to be reported in tones of enchanted enthusiasm or blatant publicity, a foolish practice, which, even if it had to do with the “wisest Monarch” of all times, was almost equal to the behaviour of an Auerhahn (capercailzie) when mating.

I considered it a blemish on Liberal Democracy.

In Vienna I continued, as before, to follow all events in Germany with fiery enthusiasm, whether they con¬ cerned political or cultural questions. With proud admiration I compared the rise of the Empire with the decadence of the Austrian State. But if the events of foreign policy caused me solid pleasure, on the whole, I was often distressed by the political life at home, which was not so satisfactory. The campaign against William II did not meet with my approval. I regarded him not only as the German Emperor, but above all, as the creator of a German Navy. The fact that the Reichstag forbade the Emperor to make speeches therefore infuriated me, because the prohibition came from a quarter which, in my eyes, really had no com¬ petence to do so, and yet during a single sitting those parliamentary ganders put together more nonsensical chatter than a whole dynasty of emperors, even the weakest of them, could do during centuries.

It enraged me that in a State in which any fool

30

MY STRUGGLE

could claim the right to criticize and was actually let loose on the nation as a “lawgiver” in the Reichstag, the wearer of the Imperial Crown could be repri¬ manded by the most insipid and absurd institution of all time.

I was even more disgusted that the Vienna Press, which bowed respectfully before the lowest of the low, if he belonged to the Court, now, with a pretence of anxiety, but, as I saw it, with hardly disguised hostility, gave expression to its objection to the German Emperor.

I was obliged to admit that one of the anti-semitic papers, the Deutsche Volksblatt , behaved with more decency in connection with the same subject.

The nauseating manner in which the more influential Press toadied to France was also on my nerves. One had to be ashamed to be a German when observing those dulcet hymns in praise of the “great culture- nation”. The wretched pandering to France more than once made me throw dowm those “world-journals”. I would then turn to the Volksblatt , which seemed to me to take a somewhat cleaner, if smaller, view of these matters. I did not agree with its sharply anti-semitic tone, but I now and again read in it arguments which caused me some reflection.

In any case, I learned slowly from such suggestions about the man and the Movement which then decided the fate of Vienna : Dr. Karl Lueger and the Christian- Socialist Party.

When I arrived in Vienna I was hostile to both. In my eyes the man and the Movement were “reac¬ tionary”.

Once when I was walking through the inner city I suddenly came across a being in a long caftan with black side-locks. My first thought was : Is that a Jew ? In Linz they did not look like that. I watched the man stealthily and cautiously, but the longer I stared at that strange countenance and studied it feature

MY STRUGGLE

3i

by feature, the more the question in a different form turned in my brain : Is that a German ?

As always on such occasions, I proceeded to try and remove my doubts by means of books. For the first time in my life I bought some anti-semitic pamphlets for a few heller. Unfortunately these assumed that the reader had at least some knowledge or understanding of the Jewish question. Finally, the tone of most of them was such that I again fell into doubt, because the assertions in them were supported by such flimsy and unscientific arguments.

The subject appeared so vast and the study of it so endless that, tortured by the fear of doing an injustice, I again became anxious and unsure of myself.

I could not well continue to doubt that here it was a matter not of Germans of another religion, but of a separate nation ; for as soon as I began to study the question and take notice of the Jews, Vienna appeared to me in another light. Now, wherever I went, 1 saw Jews, and the more I saw, the more strikingly and obviously were they different from other people. The inner city and the parts North of the Danube Canal especially swarmed with a population which bore no similarity with the Germans.

But though I might still have doubts, my hesitations were dispelled by the attitude of a section of the Jews themselves.

A great Movement arose amongst them, which was widely represented in Vienna, in strong favour of asserting the national character of Judaism ; this was Zionism.

It certainly looked as if only a section of the Jews would approve of this attitude, and that a large majority would condemn, in fact, frankly reject, the principle. On nearer observation, however, this appearance resolved itself into an evil mist of theories, produced purely for reasons of expedience — lies, in fact. For the so-called Liberal Jew disowned the Zionists not as

32

MY STRUGGLE

being non-Jews, but simply as Jews of a creed which was unpractical, nay, perhaps, even dangerous, for their own Judaism.

But there was no alteration in their internal solidarity.

The seeming discord between the Zionists and Liberal Jews quickly sickened me ; it seemed ungenuine through and through and all a lie ; and, moreover, unworthy of the ever-vaunted moral elevation and purity of that nation.

Judaism suffered a heavy set-back in my eyes when I got to know of its activities in the Press, in art, litera¬ ture and the drama. Unctuous protestations were no good any more now. One only had to look at their posters and study the names of the inspired creators of those hideous inventions for the cinema and the theatre which one saw commended on them, in order to become permanently hardened. It was pestilence, spiritual pestilence, worse than the Black Death, with which the nation was being inoculated.

I began to study carefully the names of all the creators of these unclean products of the artistic life as given to the people. The result was increasingly damaging to the attitude I had taken up hitherto in regard to the Jews. Though my feelings might rise against it a thousand times, my reason had to draw its own conclusions.

Then I began to examine my favourite 4 £ world press” from the same point of view.

I saw the Liberal tendencies of that Press in another light ; its dignified tone in replying to attacks, its complete ignoring of them were now revealed to me as a cunning, mean trick ; their brilliantly written theatrical critiques always favoured Jewish authors, and their adverse criticism was given to Germans alone. Their light pin-pricks against William II showed the consistency of their methods, as did also their com¬ mendation of French culture and civilization. The

MY STRUGGLE

33

general sense was so clearly to depreciate everything German that it could only be intentional.

Now that I realized the Jews as the leaders of Social Democracy, scales, as it were, began to fall from my eyes. My long mental struggle was at an end.

I gradually realized that the Social-democratic Press was preponderantly controlled by Jews. I attached no particular importance to this circumstance by itself, but it was exactly the same with the other newspapers. But there was one striking fact ; there was not a single paper with which Jews were connected which could be described as genuinely national in the sense that my education and opinions had taught me.

I got over my reluctance and tried to read this sort of Marxian stuff in the Press, but my dislike of it intensi¬ fied as I read ; I now tried to get acquainted with the compilers of that mass of knavery ; from the editors downwards they were all Jews.

I seized all the Social-democratic pamphlets I could get hold of and looked up the names of their authors — nothing but Jews. I noted the names of nearly all the leaders, the great majority were equally members of the “chosen people55 ; whether they were members of the Reichrat or secretaries of Trades Unions, chair¬ men of organizations or street agitators, the same sinister picture was presented. The names of Auster¬ litz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, etc., will ever remain in my memory.

One thing now became clear to me ; the leader¬ ship of the Party, with whose minor supporters I had been fighting hard for months, was almost entirely in the hands of a foreign race, for to my inward satis¬ faction I knew finally that the Jew was no German.

It was only now that I thoroughly understood the corrupter of our nation.

The more I contended with them the more I learned to know their dialectical methods. They began by

c

34

MY STRUGGLE

relying on the stupidity of their opponents, and if that was unsuccessful they themselves would pretend stupidity. If that was no good, they would refuse to take in what was said or promptly leap to another subject, and they came out with truisms, which, when agreed to, they made to refer to something quite dif¬ ferent ; then, once again on their own ground, they would weaken and pretend to have no precise know¬ ledge. Wherever one attacked such apostles, one’s hand met foul slime. If one smote one of them so crushingly that, with the bystanders looking on, he had no course but to agree, and if one thought one had gained at least one step, he merely showed great astonishment the next day. The Jew entirely forgot what had been said the day before and repeated his shameful old story as if nothing had happened, pre¬ tended anger and amazement and forgetfulness of everything except that the debate had proved the truth of his assertions.

I was often left staring. One did not know which to admire most — their glibness or their artfulness in lying. I gradually began to hate them.

All this had one good side. In the sphere in which the carriers, or at least the propagators, of Social Democracy came under my eye, my love for my own national inevitably increased.

Under the inducement of my everyday experience, I now began to seek out the sources of the Marxian doctrine. Its workings were clear to me in individual instances ; my observant eye daily marked its suc¬ cesses, and with a little imagination I was able to figure out the consequences of it. The only remaining question was whether its founders enjoyed the results of their creation, as seen in its most recent form, or whether they themselves were the victims of an error.

Thus I began to make myself acquainted with the founders of the doctrine in order to study the principles

MY STRUGGLE

35

of the Movement. The fact that I achieved my object quicker than I dared to hope at first was thanks to the knowledge I had gained of the Jewish question, though at that time it had not gone very deep. Nothing but that made possible to me a practical comparison of its realities with the theoretic claims of the first apostles of Social Democracy, since it had taught me to under¬ stand the verbal methods of the Jewish people, whose aim it is to hide, or at least cloak, their ideas ; their real objective is not to be read on the lines, but is tucked away well concealed between them.

It was at this time that the greatest change took place in me that I was ever to experience. From being a feeble world citizen, I became a fanatical anti- semite.

During my study of the influence of the Jewish nation throughout long periods of human history, the gloomy question suddenly occurred to me whether possibly inscrutable destiny, for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, had not decreed the final victory of that little nation. But this question was answered in the negative by the Jewish doctrine itself.

The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristo¬ cratic principle in nature, and in place of the eternal privilege of force and strength sets up the mass and dead weight of numbers. It thus denies the value of the individual among men, combats the importance of nationality and race, thereby depriving humanity of the whole meaning of its existence and Kultur . It would, therefore, as a principle of the Universe, conduce to an end of all order conceivable to mankind. And as in that great discernable organism nothing but chaos could result from the application of such a law, so on this earth would ruin be the only result for its inhabi¬ tants.

If the Jew, with the help of his Marxian creed, conquers the nations of this world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of the human race, and the planet

MY STRUGGLE

36

will drive through the ether once again empty of man¬ kind as it did millions of years ago.

Eternal nature takes inexorable revenge on any usurpation of her realm.

Thus did I now believe that I must act in the sense of the Almighty Creator : By defending myself against the Jews I am doing the Lord’s work.

CHAPTER III

POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS RESULTING FROM MY

TIME IN VIENNA

POLITICAL thought in general was greater and more comprehensive in range in the old Danube Monarchy than in Germany itself during the same period — with the exception of Prussia, Hamburg and the North Sea Coast. By “Austria” I mean, for this purpose, that parts of the great Habsburg Empire, which, as a result of being settled by Germans, exhibited in every respect not only the historical forces in the formation of that State, but also in its population, those capable of supplying that creation, politically so arti¬ ficial, with its inner cultural life in the course of many centuries. As time advanced, the life and destiny of that State depended more and more on keeping alive this seed-cell of the Empire.

The fact that the collection of races, called “Austria”, was finally destroyed does not in the least imply political incompetence of the Germans of the old Ostmark , but it was the inevitable result of the impossibility of main¬ taining permanently a State of fifty millions, consisting of different races, with the help of ten millions, unless absolutely definite principles were established in good time.

The German-Austrian was always used to living within the bounds of a great Empire, and had never lost the feeling of the duties which this involved. In that State he alone, when looking beyond the frontiers of the narrower Crown land, thought of them as the frontiers of an Empire. Though, indeed, it was his fate to be separated from the common Fatherland, he

37

38

MY STRUGGLE

ever sought to master the immense task and to keep for Germany what his ancestors had once wrested from the East in their age-long struggles. In heart and memory the best men never ceased to be in sympathy with the common mother country — and yet but a shred of their home-land remained theirs.

The circle of vision of the German-Austrian was wider than that of the rest of the Empire. His economic relations frequently embraced almost the whole of the composite Empire. Almost all really large enterprises were in his hands. He supplied most of the leading technical experts and officials. Moreover, he carried on the trade abroad, in so far as the Jews had not laid hands on that domain which had been his of old time. The German-Austrian recruit might perhaps enter a German regiment, but that regiment might be as likely to be stationed in Herzegovina as in Vienna or Galicia. The corps of officers continued to be German, the higher officials preponderantly so. Art and science were German. Leaving out the more recent artistic developments, which might simply be the production of a negro race, the possessor and diffuser of true artistic ideas was the German, and the German only. In music, architecture, sculpture and painting Vienna was the source which supplied the whole Dual Monarchy in an inexhaustible stream, with no appear¬ ance of ever drying up.

Finally, the whole burden of foreign policy was borne by Germans, although a few Hungarians may be included in the number.

Thus any attempt to maintain this Empire was in vain, since the essentials were absent.

In the Austrian Empire of races there was only one possible way of defeating the centrifugal tendencies of individual nations ; the State either must be governed from the centre and organized internally to that end — or it was inconceivable.

In occasional lucid intervals the Emperor perceived

MY STRUGGLE

39

this, but it was soon forgotten, or shelved as being difficult to carry out.

In Germany the Reich, though composed of small, disconnected atoms, only contained members of a single race. In Austria conditions were otherwise.

In the various countries, apart from Hungary, there were no memories of a great past, or perhaps the passing of time had extinguished them ; at any rate, they were dim and blurred. But in their place during the period of the principle of nationality popular forces developed in those countries, all the harder to circumvent at a time when national States began to be formed on the edges of the Monarchy, the peoples of which, being racially related or identical with nationalities in Austria, were in a position to exert more attraction than German Austria possibly could.

Even Vienna failed to stand up to this struggle.

In Buda Pest, which had developed into a capital city, Vienna was for the first time faced by a rival whose task it was not so much to weld the whole Monarchy together, as to strengthen one part of it. Soon Prague was to follow Buda Pest’s example, then Lemberg, Laibach, and other centres.

Ever since the death of Joseph II (1790) the course of this process could be clearly traced. Its speed depended on a number of factors, which lay partly in the Monarchy itself, but were in other respects the result of the Empire’s political position at various times towards foreign countries.

If the struggle to maintain this State was to be taken up seriously and fought to a finish, ruthless and con¬ sistent centralization alone could attain the object. But homogeneity in form must be expressed by estab¬ lishment in principle of a unified State language, and the technical instrument for this had to be forced into the hands of the administration, for without it a unified

40

MY STRUGGLE

State could not endure. The only way, moreover, of producing uniform and permanent State consciousness was through the schools and education. It could not be achieved in ten or twenty years, but one had to think in centuries, for, as in all questions of colonization, steadfastness of purpose is of greater importance than spasmodic effort.

The Austrian Empire was not composed of similar races and was held together not by common blood, but rather by a common fist. This being so, weakness in the leadership would not lead necessarily to torpor in the State, but would arouse all the individualist instincts, due to race, which are deterred from developing in times when there is a will predominating.

Failure to comprehend this is perhaps the tragic crime of the House of Habsburg.

At one period fate held her torch once more high over the land ; then it was extinguished for ever.

Joseph II, Roman Emperor over the German nation, realized with poignant anxiety how his House was being thrust into the uttermost corner of the Empire and was bound to founder in the vortex of a Babylon of races unless the shortcomings of his pre¬ decessors were made good at the eleventh hour. That “friend of man” set out with superhuman energy to repair the neglect of previous rulers and tried to recover in ten years what had been let slip for centuries. His successors were unequal to the task either in mind or will-power.

The Revolution of 1848 was perhaps a struggle of classes everywhere, but in Austria it was the commence¬ ment of a fresh struggle of nationalities. But the German, either forgetting or not realizing that origin, placed himself at the service of the revolutionary move¬ ment, and he sealed his own fate by so doing. He played his part in arousing the spirit of world

MY STRUGGLE

41

democracy, which in a short time robbed him of the principles underlying his own existence.

The formation of a representative parliamentary body, without previous establishment of the principle of a common State language, laid the foundation stone of the end of the predominance of the German race ; and from that moment the State itself was bound for destruction. What then followed was the historical evolution of an Empire.

I have no wish to wander off into details, since that is not the object of this book. I wish merely to assemble for the purpose of closer consideration those events which, being always constant as the causes of decadence in nations and States, possess significance for our epoch, and which helped finally to settle the principles of my political thought.

Amongst the institutions which might have indicated to the ordinary citizen, even if not blessed with sharp eyes, that the Monarchy was disintegrating, the chief was that one which ought to have chosen strength as its essential quality — Parliament, or, as it was called in Austria, the Reichsrat.

It is manifest that the Parliament of England, the land of ‘ ‘classic” democracy, was the parent of that body. That blessed institution was transplanted thence in its entirety and established in Vienna with as little alteration as possible.

The English two-Chamber system inaugurated its new life in the Abgeordnetenhaus and Herrenhaus . But the Houses themselves were somewhat different. When Barry’s Houses of Parliament sprang, as it were, from the waters of the Thames, he drew from the history of the British world Empire inspiration for the ornamenta¬ tion for the 1,200 niches, brackets and pillars of his magnificent edifice. Thus, with their sculptures and paintings, the Houses of the Lords and Commons became the temple of the nation’s glory.

42

MY STRUGGLE

Here was Vienna’s first difficulty. For when the Dane, Hansen, had completed the last pinnacle of the marble palace for the people’s representatives, his only course was to try to ornament it with subjects derived from the Antique. Greek and Roman statesmen and philosophers embellish that theatrical edifice of “Western Democracy”, and with symbolic irony the quadrigae on the top of the buildings are driving away from each other towards the four quarters of the heavens, thus perfectly symbolizing the divergent tendencies inside.

The nationalities would have taken it as an insult and a provocation if Austrian history had been glorified in that work, just as in the German Empire it was not until the thunder of battle was heard in the World War that they had dared consecrate Paul Wallot’s Reichstag building in Berlin with an inscription, “ To the German People” .

The destiny of the German race in the Austrian State was dependent on their strength in the Reichsrat. Up to the time when universal suffrage and the secret ballot were introduced, there was still a German majority in Parliament. This condition of affairs was specially objectionable because, owing to the unreliable behaviour of Social Democracy in a national sense, the latter always came forward in opposition to the German interest in critical questions affecting the German race — in order to avoid estranging its adherents amongst the various foreign races. Even then the Social Democrats could no longer be regarded as a German party. After universal suffrage was brought in the German superiority ceased even as a numerical majority. There was nothing now in the way of further de-Germanization of the State.

The desire for national self-preservation, therefore, led me to feel but little enthusiasm for popular repre¬ sentation, in which the German race was always being betrayed instead of being represented. Moreover, these were evils which, like so many others, were attributable

MY STRUGGLE

43

not to the thing in itself, but to the Austrian State. In the early days I still thought that, if the German majority were restored in the representative bodies, there would be no occasion to go on with my opposition on principle, so long as the old State continued to exist.

It took but little time to arouse my indignation when I saw the miserable comedy which was being unfolded before my eyes.

Democracy in the West to-day is the forerunner of Marxism, which would be inconceivable without Demo¬ cracy. It is the feeding-ground of that world pestilence which is enabled to develop there. In its outward form of expression — the Parliamentary system — it appeared as “a monstrosity of filth and fire” (eine Spottgeburt aus Dreck und Feuer), in which, to my regret, the fire seemed to have burnt itself out only too quickly.

I am more than grateful to fortune for putting this question before me in Vienna for examination, since I fear that in Germany I could not then have so easily answered the question. If I had learned to know the absurdity of that institution, called Parliament, for the first time in Berlin, I might perhaps have fallen into the opposite extreme, and with no apparent good reason have ranged myself with those in whose eyes the good of the People and Empire lay in exalting the Imperial idea, and who thus set themselves blindly in opposition to mankind and the times.

In Austria that was impossible. It was not so easy there to slip from one mistake into another. If Parlia¬ ment was worth nothing, the Habsburgers were worth still less — not more in any case.

Parliament decides upon something, be the con¬ sequence ever so devastating ; no single man is respon¬ sible, no one can be called to account for it. For can it be called taking responsibility for a Government which has done all the harm merely to retire from

44

MY STRUGGLE

office ? Or for the coalition to be changed, or even for Parliament to dissolve ? For how can a varying majority of men ever be held responsible at all ? Is not every conception of responsibility closely connected with personality ? But can one in practice indict the leading personage in a Government for dealings, the existence and carrying out of which is to be set down solely to the account of the will and pleasure of a large assemblage of men ?

Or — is the leading statesman’s task to consist not so much in producing a creative thought or plan as in the art with which he makes the genius of his proposal comprehensive to a flock of silly sheep for the purpose of imploring their final consent ? Must it be the criterion of a statesman that he must be as strong in the art of persuasion as in that of statesmanlike skill in the selection of great lines of conduct or decision ?

Do we believe that progress comes in this world from the combined intelligence of the majority and not from the brain of an individual ? Or do we imagine that in future we can dispense with this conception of human Kultur ?

Does it not, on the contrary, appear even more necessary to-day than ever before ?

By its denial of the authority of the individual and its substitution of the sum of the mass present at any given times, the parliamentary principle of the consent of the majority sins against the basic aristocratic prin¬ ciple in nature, in which connection its view of the higher classes need in no way be bound up with the present-day decadence of our Upper Ten Thousand.

It is difficult for a reader of Jewish newspapers to imagine the evils involved in this modern institution of democratic control by Parliament, unless he has learned to think and examine for himself. It has been the primal cause why all our political life has been so unbelievably flooded with all that is most worthless. So long as the true leaders are withdrawn from political

MY STRUGGLE

45

activities, which consist chiefly not in creative work and production, but in haggling and bargaining for the favours of a majority, so long will these activities be in harmony with low mentalities, and will also be an attraction to them.

One thing we must and may never forget : a majority can never be a substitute for the Man. It is always the advocate not only of stupidity, but also of cowardly policies ; and just as a hundred fools do not make one wise man, a heroic decision is not likely to come from a hundred cowards.

The result of it all is the terrific speed of the changes in the most important positions and offices in a State such as ours, a fact which is unfavourable in any case and which frequently works with absolutely catastrophic effects ; for not only the stupid and inefficient fall victims to these methods of procedure, but the true leaders even more so, if and whenever fate manages to set such a character in that position.

So the result will ever increasingly be a spiritual impoverishment of the leading classes. Anyone may judge what the result will be for the nation and the State.

Our ordinary conception of the expression, “public opinion”, depends only in a very small measure in our own personal experiences or knowledge, but mainly, on the other hand, on what we are told ; and this is presented to us in the form of so-called “enlightenment”, persistent and emphatic. The political vision of the mass perceives the final result only of what has frequently been a tough and searching struggle of the soul and intellect.

Far the most effective share in the political “educa¬ tion”, which in this case is very appropriately named “propaganda”, is that which falls to the Press, which takes on itself the “work of enlightenment” and thus sets up a kind of school for grown-ups, as it were. This

46

MY STRUGGLE

instruction is, however, not in the hands of the State, but is gripped by forces for the most part very inferior in character. As a young man in Vienna, I had the best opportunities for getting a knowledge of the owners and clever craftsmen of that machine for mass education. At the start I could but wonder at the short time it had taken for that evil power in the State successfully to create a definite public opinion, in spite of the fact that it might involve a deceitful reversal of the public’s real desires and views. In a few days this absurdity became a State act of great consequence, whilst at the same time essential problems fell into general oblivion, or rather they were stolen away from the memory and attention of the masses.

Thus in the course of a few weeks names were suc¬ cessfully conjured up out of nothing, and incredible hopes were connected with them in the public mind ; they were given a popularity which a really great man could never hope to attain in the whole course of his life — names which a month before no one had even heard of ; whereas old and trusted characters in public and State life died in the height of their efficiency as far as their contemporaries were concerned, or were over¬ whelmed with such abuse that their names seemed likely soon to become symbols of infamy. It was neces¬ sary to study this shameful Jewish method of simul¬ taneousness and from hundreds and hundreds of directions, as if by an incantation, pouring filth in the shape of slander and defamation on the clean garb of honourable men, in order to estimate the full menace of these scoundrels in the Press at its right value.

We shall most quickly and easily grasp that sense¬ less and dangerous human aberration if we compare the democratic parliamentary system with true Ger¬ manic Democracy.

The point most remarkable in the first is that a number, say five hundred, men are elected, who are

MY STRUGGLE

47

called upon to decide on every kind of issue. In practice, therefore, they and they only are the Government, for if a Cabinet is selected from their number, which, as far as the country is concerned, undertake to control the business of the State, it is really on a pretence. The so-called Government can, as a matter of fact, take no action without first obtaining the consent of the general assemblage. It cannot, however, be made responsible for anything, since the final decision is never in its hands, but in those of the parliamentary majority. It exists merely to execute the will of the majority in all cases.

It is not the aim of our present-day Democracy to form an assemblage of wise men, but rather to collect together a crowd of subservient nonentities, who can easily be led in certain definite directions, especially if the intelligence in each individual of them is limited. Only thus can the game of Party politics be played in its unhealthy present-day sense. But it also makes it possible for the real wire-pullers to remain safely in the background, with no possibility of ever being made personally responsible. For now a decision, however harmful to the nation, cannot be put to the account of any one rascal who is in the public eye, whereas it can always be transferred to the shoulders of a whole section.

Thus there is no responsibility in practice, for this liability can rest on one individual only, and not on an assemblages of parliamentary chatterboxes.

That institution can only be pleasing or profitable to mendacious crawlers who avoid the light of day, and it must be hateful to any good, straightforward man who is ready to take personal responsibility.

Hence this style of Democracy has become the instrument of the race, which, in order to forward its own aims, has to avoid the sunlight now and in all future time. None but a Jew can value an institution which is as dirty and false as he is himself.

48

MY STRUGGLE

In contradistinction to the foregoing is the true Germanic Democracy with free choice of the leader, along with his obligation to assume entire respon¬ sibility for all he does and causes to be done. This includes no majority note on individual questions, but simply the decision of one who backs it with his life and all that he has.

For anyone who objects to that, such being the requirements, it would hardly be possible to find any¬ one ready to devote his person to tasks so risky, there can be but one answer :

“God be thanked, the whole point of a German Democracy is that any stray unworthy climber and moral shirker cannot come in by the back stairs and govern his fellow-countrymen, but that incompetents and weaklings will be scared by the immensity of the responsibility to be assumed.”

The parliamentary regime in the later years con¬ tinuously contributed towards progressive weakening of the old Habsburg State. As the predominance of the German element was broken up by its agency, a system grew up of playing off the nationalities one against the other. But the general line of development was directed against the Germans. In particular, from the time when his heirship to the Throne began to give the Archduke Francis Ferdinand a certain influence, a deliberate scheme arose for increasing Czech influence, which was the policy of those at the top. The future ruler of the Dual Monarchy tried by every means in his power to give impetus to the de-Germanizing process and to assist it himself, or at least favour it with his protection. Thus purely German villages were, by roundabout official means, slowly but surely thrust into the danger-zone of mixed languages. In Lower Austria itself the process was making more and more rapid progress, and many of the Czechs considered Vienna as their chief city.

MY STRUGGLE

49

The preponderant thought of this new Habsburger, whose family spoke Czech for choice (the Archduke’s wife had been a Czech countess and had married the Prince morganatically, and the circles in which she was born were anti-German by tradition), was gradually to establish a Slav State in Central Europe, on strictly Catholic lines, to be a protection against Orthodox Russia. In this way, as so frequently happened with the Habsburgers, religion was once again dragged in to serve a purely political conception — moreover, a bane¬ ful one, when looked at from the German point of view.

The result was more than tragic in several respects. Neither the House of Habsburg nor the Catholic Church profited by it as they had hoped.

Habsburg lost the Throne, Rome a great State.

For by summoning religious forces to serve its political ends the Crown aroused a spirit which at the start it clearly thought to be an impossible one. The attempt to stamp out Germanism in the old Monarchy by every possible means was answered by the Pan- German movement in Austria.

After the War of 1870, the House of Habsburg slowly but deliberately set to work with its last spark of determination to root out the dangerous German race — for this was surely the aim of Slavophile policy — and revolt flamed up in the nation, which was deter¬ mined to resist to the end in a way unknown in the more recent history of Germany.

For the first time men of national and patriotic feeling turned into rebels — rebels not against the State in itself, but against a system of government which, they were convinced, was bound to end by destroying its character as a nation.

For the first time in later German history distinction arose between ordinary dynastic patriotism and national love for Fatherland and People.

It should not be forgotten, as a general rule, that it is not the highest aim of man’s existence to maintain a

D

50

MY STRUGGLE

State or a government, but rather to conserve its national character.

Human rights are above State rights.

If, in its struggle for human rights, a race goes under, it means that it has weighed too light in the scales of fate to be fit to continue to exist in this ter¬ restrial world. For if a man is unprepared or unable to fight for his life, just Providence has already decreed his end.

The world is not for craven-hearted races.

Everything connected with the rise and the passing of the Pan-German movement on the one hand, and the astounding advance of the Christian-Socialist Party on the other, were to be of the deepest consequence to me as objects for study.

I shall start my examination with the two men who may be regarded as the founders and leaders of the two movements : George von Schoenerer and Dr. Karl Lueger.

Considered as men they tower, both of them, far above the average political “parliamentary” personal¬ ities. In that slough of universal political corruption their whole lives remained clean and incorruptible. And yet my personal sympathies lay at first on the side of the Pan-German Schoenerer, but they gradually attached themselves to the Christian-Socialist leader as well.

When I compared their capabilities, Schoenerer appeared to me the better and more solid thinker on the basic problems. He visualized the enforced end of the Austrian State more clearly and correctly than anyone else. If his warnings regarding the Habsburg Monarchy had been listened to particularly in the Empire, the disaster of Germany’s World War against the whole of Europe would never have happened. But though Schoenerer realized the inwardness of the problems he was mistaken as regards the human element.

MY STRUGGLE

51

This was Lueger’s strong point. He had a rare knowledge of men, and he especially avoided the error of visualizing men as better than they were. Thus he took better account of the real possibilities of life, whereas Schoenerer had but little understanding of them. All the Pan-German’s ideas were right in theory, but he lacked the strength and understanding to communicate his theoretic knowledge to the public, and to present it in such a form as to fit in with the capability of the mass of the people for absorbing it, for that is, and always will be, limited. Therefore all his knowledge was but the wisdom of a seer, with never a possibility of becoming a practical reality.

Unfortunately he had a most imperfect perception of the extraordinary limitations of the “Bourgeoisie’s” readiness to fight, due to their situation in business, which individuals are too much afraid of losing, and which therefore deters them from action.

This lack of understanding of the significance of the lower strata of society was the cause of the utter inadequacy of his views on the social question.

In all this Dr. Lueger was the opposite of Schoenerer. He understood only too perfectly that the fighting strength of the higher Bourgeoisie is small nowadays, and insufficient to win a victory for a great new Move¬ ment. He was prepared to make use of all available means of power, to attract to himself strong existing institutions, so as to derive the greatest possible profit for his movement from such old established sources of power.

He based his new Party first of all on the middle class which was threatened with extinction, and thus secured a class of adherents extremely hard to shake, ready both for great sacrifices and capable of stubborn fighting. His extreme cleverness in maintaining rela¬ tions with the Catholic Church won over the younger clergy. In fact, the old Clerical Party were forced to retire from the field, or else they more sensibly joined

52

MY STRUGGLE

the new Party in the hope of gradually regaining their position.

Much injustice would be done to the man if we regard the foregoing as his only characteristic. For he possessed the qualities not only of a great tactician, but also of a really great and inspired reformer ; but he had the restraints due to an exact knowledge of the possibilities before him and also of his own capabilities.

The aims which this truly outstanding man set before himself were intensely practical. He wished to capture Vienna, the heart of the Monarchy. From that city the final vestiges of life filtered into the sickly, worn-out body of the decaying Empire. If the heart were sound, the rest of the body was bound to revive — an idea correct in principle, but the period for turn¬ ing it into action was finite and limited.

Herein lay the man’s weakness.

His achievements as Burgomaster of the city are immortal in the best sense of the word ; but even so he could not save the Monarchy. It was too late.

His rival, Schoenerer, saw this more clearly.

What Dr. Lueger took practically in hand succeeded wonderfully ; what he hoped for as a result of it came to nothing.

Schoenerer failed to carry out his desires ; his fears were realized, alas ! in a terrible fashion.

Thus neither of them attained their further objec¬ tive. Lueger could not save Austria, and Schoenerer could not guard the German race against ruin.

It is most instructive for us to-day to study the causes of the failures of both these Parties. For my friends it is essential, since in many points conditions to-day are similar to those of that time, and it may help us to avoid making the mistakes which led to the death of one Movement and the barrenness of the other.

The fate which overtook the Pan-German move¬ ment was due to the fact that it did not at the start

MY STRUGGLE

53

attach supreme importance to gaining adherents amongst the great mass of the people. It grew bour¬ geois and respectable, but underneath it was Radical.

The German position in Austria was already desperate by the time of the rise of Pan-Germanism. With each succeeding year Parliament was acquiescing more and more in a policy of gradual extinction of the German race. The only hope for any belated attempt to save it lay in the removal of that institution ; there was, however, but very little prospect of this.

The Pan-Germans went into Parliament and came out beaten.

The “Forum” in which the Pan-Germans put their case had grown not greater but more insignifi¬ cant ; for men only speak to the circles which are there to listen to them, or which receive their words through reports in the Press.

But the greatest “Forum” and the most direct as regards the listeners is not the Parliament Chamber, but a large public meeting. For thousands of people are present who have come simply to hear what the speaker has to say to them, whereas in the Parliament Chamber only a few hundred are present, and most of them merely attend for the purpose of receiving their payment as members, and not to receive enlighten¬ ment from the wisdom of one or other of the “People’s Representatives” .

Speaking before such a “Forum” really is casting pearls before swine. Truly it is not worth the trouble ! No sort of success is possible.

And that was what happened. The Pan-German members grew hoarse with speaking — but they carried no weight whatever.

The Press either ignored them entirely or so muti¬ lated their speeches that any consecutiveness, often the sense even, was twisted round or lost altogether, and the public received but a very bad picture of the aims of the new Movement. What individual members said

54

MY STRUGGLE

was not important ; the importance lay in what those who read them received. This consisted of mere snippets of their speeches, which, being mutilated, merely could — and were meant to — produce a sense¬ less impression. Thus the only Forum before which they really spoke consisted of a paltry 500 men, and that tells us enough.

Worse was to follow :

The Pan-German movement could only hope for success if it realized from the very first moment that it was not a question of forming a new Party, but rather a new view of life in general. This alone could call up the inner forces to fight that immense struggle to a finish. For that purpose none but the very best and boldest brains are any good.

If the fight for a world system is not conducted by heroes, ready to sacrifice all, in a short time it will be impossible to find fighters prepared to die. A man who fights only for himself cannot have much left over for the general cause.

The hard struggle which the Pan-German move¬ ment had with the Catholic Church is only explicable as being due to the lack of understanding there was of the psychological character of the people.

The appointment of Czech incumbents to parishes was one of the many methods used to transform Austria generally into a Slav country. It was done somewhat as follows : Czech clergy were introduced into purely German parishes, and these soon began to superim¬ pose the interests of the Czech race upon those of the Church, and they became nuclei of the de-Germanizing process.

The German clergy collapsed almost entirely, alas ! before this state of affairs. Not only were they them¬ selves quite useless in a fight for the German cause, but they were unable to meet the attacks of the other side with sufficient force of resistance. Thus the German

MY STRUGGLE

55

race was slowly but irresistibly driven back by abuse of religion on the one side and weakness in defence on the other.

George Schoenerer was not one who did things by halves. He took up the struggle with the Church under the conviction that he alone could rescue the German race. The Los von Rom movement appeared a most powerful, though a most difficult, form of attack, but it was bound to lay the hostile Hofburg in ruins. If it succeeded, the unhappy religious division in Germany would be settled for ever, and such a victory would prove an immense gain to the internal strength of the Empire and the German nation. But its assumption and its reasoning with regard to the struggle were both incorrect.

There is no doubt that the national power of resist¬ ance of the Catholic priesthood of German nationality in all questions affecting the German race was inferior to that of their non-German brethren, especially the Czechs. Whereas the Czech clergy treated their own race subjectively, and the Church merely objectively, the German priests’ devotion to the Church was sub¬ jective, and it was objective as regards the German race.

Compare the attitude, which our official class, for instance, is adopting towards a movement for a national re-birth with that which would be adopted by the official class of any other nation under similar circum¬ stances. Or do we imagine that the corps of officers anywhere else in the world would dismiss national demands with the phrase “State authority”, as hap¬ pened with us five years ago ; it was held up as being perfectly natural, nay highly meritorious !

Do not both our creeds to-day assume an attitude with regard to the Jewish question which is in harmony neither with the nation’s importance nor with the requirements of religion ? And yet compare the atti¬ tude of any Jewish Rabbi in all questions of even minor

56

MY STRUGGLE

importance to Jewry as a race with that of our clergy of both Christian creeds towards the German race.

That is what always happens with us if ever it is a matter of defending an abstract idea.

“State authority”, “Democracy”, “Pacifism”, “International Solidarity”, etc., are merely ideas with us, which we always convert into fixed and purely doctrinaire conceptions, so that all matters of urgent national necessity are judged from that point of view.

Protestantism will always help in furthering all that is essentially German whenever it is a matter of inward purity or increasing national sentiment, or defence of German life, language, nay, even German freedom, since all these are essentially part of itself ; but it is most hostile to any attempt to rescue the nation from the clutches of its most deadly enemy, for its attitude towards Judaism has been laid down more or less as a dogma. Nevertheless it wavers undecidedly around the question — and unless that question is solved, all attempts to bring about a German revival are without meaning or possibility of success.

Political parties ought to have nothing to do with religious problems, as long as they are not undermining the morals of the race ; in the same way religion should not be mixed up with Party intrigues.

If Church dignitaries make use of religious institu¬ tions and even doctrines in order to injure their own nationality, they ought to have no following ; their own weapons should be used against them.

A political leader must never meddle with the religious doctrines and institutions of his people, or else he ought not to be a politician, but rather a reformer, if he has the qualities for that !

Any other attitude would lead to catastrophe especially in Germany.

MY STRUGGLE

57

In the course of my study of the Pan-German movement and its struggle with Rome then and later I arrived at the following conclusion : through its poor comprehension of the meaning of the social problem the Movement lost the fighting strength of the mass of the people ; by going into Parliament it lost its driving force and burdened itself with all the weaknesses inherent in that institution. Its struggle against the Church discredited it with many sections of the lower and middle classes and robbed it of very many of the best elements which could be named as being essentially national.

The practical results of the Kulturkampf in Austria were just nil.

In almost every respect in which the Pan-German movement failed the dispositions of the Christian Socialist Party were well and correctly thought out.

It had the necessary understanding of the signifi¬ cance of the masses, and from the very start it attracted to itself a certain section of them by outspoken assertion of its social character. And since it did really set out to win the lower middle and artizan classes, it gained a faithful and permanent following, ready for self-sacri¬ fice. It avoided fighting with any religious institutions and thus gained support from the powerful organiza¬ tion represented by the Church. It realized the value of propaganda on a large scale and specialized in influencing psychologically the instincts of the masses, their adherents.

The fact that this Party failed in its dream of saving Austria was due to its methods, which were mistaken in two respects, and to the obscurity of its aims.

Instead of being founded on a racial basis, its anti- Semitism depended on the religious conception. The reason why this error crept in was the same as that which caused the second mistake.

Its founder thought that if the Christian Socialist

5^

MY STRUGGLE

Party was to save Austria it ought not to take its stand not on the racial principle, since a general dissolution of the State would shortly follow in any case. The leaders of the Party considered that the situation in Vienna demanded all possible avoidance of tendencies towards disruption, and support of all points of view conducing to unity.

Vienna was at that time so strongly impregnated with Czech elements that nothing but extreme tolerance in regard to all racial problems could keep that Party from being anti-German from the start. If Austria was to be saved, that Party could not be dispensed with. Thus they made special efforts to win the very large number of small Czech traders in Vienna by opposing the Manchester Liberal school of thought, and they hoped thereby to have discovered a war-cry for the fight against Judaism, based on religion, which would put all differences of race in the old Austria in the shade.

It is obvious that a fight on such a basis would worry the Jews to a very limited degree. If the worst came to the worst, a drop of Holy water would always get them out of their troubles and preserve their Juda¬ ism at the same time.

This doing things by halves destroyed the value of the anti-Semitic position of the Christian Socialist Party.

It was sham anti-Semitism and was almost worse than none at all, for people were lulled into security and thought they had the enemy by the ears, whereas they were really led by the nose themselves.

If Dr. Karl Lueger had lived in Germany he would have counted as one of the great men of our race ; it was his misfortune and that of his work that it lay in that impossible State, Austria. At the time of his death the little flame in the Balkans was already begin¬ ning to spread more greedily with each month that

MY STRUGGLE

59

passed, so that kindly fate spared him the pain of seeing what he still believed he would be able to prevent.

The Pan-German movement was quite right in its theory as to the aim of German regeneration, but it was unlucky in its choice of methods. It was nationalist but, alas ! not social enough to win the mass of the people. Its anti-Semitism was based on a true appre¬ ciation of the importance of the racial problem and not on theories of religion. On the other hand, its struggle against a definite creed erred both as regards facts and tactics.

The Christian Socialist movement’s ideas about the aim of a German revival were too vague, but, as a Party, it was fortunate and intelligent in its choice of methods. It realized the importance of the social question, but was mistaken in its fight against the Jews and was quite ignorant of the strength of the con¬ ception of nationality.

At that time I was a prey to discontent, the more I realized the hollowness of the State and the impossi¬ bility of saving it. I felt with absolute certainty that in all things it stood for the unhappiness of the German race.

I was convinced that the State was sure to check and obstruct every really great German and to support every man and everything that was un-German. I hated the mixture of races displayed in the capital, I hated the motley collection of Czechs, Poles, Hun¬ garians, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croats, etc., and above all, that ever present fungoid growth — Jews, and again Jews.

Seeing that my heart was never in love with an Austrian monarchy, but ever beat for a German Reich, I could only regard the collapse of that State as the beginning of salvation for the German nation.

Therefore my longing grew even greater to go to the land whither my secret love and desire had drawn me from my earliest youth.

6o

MY STRUGGLE

I hoped to make a name as an architect one day, and, whether fate made me great or not, to dedicate my devoted service to my nation. I wanted to have my share of fortune, to be on the spot and play my part in the country where my heart’s most burning desire was destined to be fulfilled : the union of my beloved home with the common Fatherland, the German Reich.

Vienna gave me the hardest and most thorough schooling in my whole life ; only now do I fully appre¬ ciate the essential value of those years of discipline.

That is why I have treated that period rather fully — because it gave me my first instruction in the questions affecting the principles of the Party, which, having started on a very small scale, is, after barely five years,* well on the way to become a great popular movement. I do not know what my attitude towards Judiasm, Social Democracy, all that is meant by Marxism, the Social question, etc., would have been to-day, if the force of destiny had not at that early period of my life given me a foundation of opinions based on personal experience.

* Written in 1924

CHAPTER IV

MUNICH

IN the spring of 1912 I went to Munich.

A German town ! How different from Vienna ! I felt bad when I thought of that Babylon of races. Also the dialect, which was nearly the same as my own and reminded me of my own youth with its con¬ nections with Lower Bavaria. In a thousand ways it was or became dear to me. I belong to that town more than to any spot in the world, and this is due to the fact that it is inseparably bound up with my own development.

In Austria the only adherents of the alliance idea were the Habsburgs and the Germans. In the first it was due to compulsion and calculation, and in the second to easy credulity and political stupidity. Easy credulity, because they imagined they would do a great service to the German Empire by means of the Triple Alliance, which would strengthen it and bring it security ; political stupidity, because their imagina¬ tions did not fit the facts, for they were really helping to chain the Empire to the dead carcase of a State, which was bound to drag them down into the abyss ; more particularly, however, because that alliance was contributing more and more to de-Germanize Austria herself. For since the Habsburgs believed an Alliance with the Empire would insure them against any inter¬ ference on the part of the latter — and unfortunately they were right in this — they were enabled to continue their policy of gradually getting rid of German influence

61

62

MY STRUGGLE

inside the country with more ease and less risk. They had no need to fear any protest from the German Government, which was known for the “objectivity” of its point of view, and moreover, in dealing with the Austrian Germans they could always silence any insistent voice which might be raised against some particularly disgraceful instance of favouritism shown to the Slavs, by a reference to the Triple Alliance.

If there had been more enlightened study of history in Germany and racial psychology, no one could have believed for an instant that the Quirinal in Rome and the Hofburg in Vienna would ever fight side by side on a common battle front. Italy would turn into a vol¬ cano before any Government would dare send a single Italian into the field on account of the fanatically hated Habsburg State, except as an enemy. I had more than once seen the passionate disdain and unfathomed hatred which obsessed the Italians against the Austrian State flare up in Vienna. The sins of the House of Habsburg in the course of centuries against Italian freedom and independence were too great ever to be forgotten, even supposing there were any desire to do so. There was no such desire either amongst the people or in the Italian Government. For Italy, therefore, there were only two possible courses in deal¬ ing with Austria — alliance or war.

Having chosen the first, they could calmly prepare for the second.

The German alliance policy was both senseless and risky, especially since Austria’s relations towards Russia had been tending more and more towards a settlement by war.

Why was any alliance concluded at all ? Simply in order to assure the future of the Reich when it was in a position to do so standing on its own feet. But the future of the Reich was nothing else than the

MY STRUGGLE 63

question of enabling the German nation to continue in existence.

The population of Germany increases by nearly 900,000 annually.

TERRITORIAL ACQUISITION AS AGAINST A POLICY OF

COLONIAL TRADE

Both these courses were considered, examined, recommended and combated from various points of view, until finally the second was chosen. The first course would undoubtedly have been the sounder of the two. Acquisition of fresh territory to accommodate the overflow population contains infinitely greater advantages, especially if the future, and not the present, is considered.

The sole hope of success for a territorial policy nowadays is to confine it to Europe, and not to extend it to places such as the Cameroons. It is the natural determination to fight for our existence that we have had to thank for the two Ostmarken of the Reich and the extent of our territory, which alone has permitted us to exist until to-day, for our internal strength.

There is another reason why this solution would have been the right one :

Many European States to-day are like pyramids standing on their points. Their possessions in Europe are ridiculous compared with their top-heavy burden of colonies, foreign trade, etc. One might say : point in Europe, base all over the world ; in contradistinction to the American Union, whose base covers its own con¬ tinent and whose apex is its point of contact with the rest of the globe. Hence the vast internal strength of that State and the weakness of most European colon¬ izing Powers.

Even England is no proof to the contrary, for we are too apt to forget the true nature of the Anglo-Saxon world in its relation to the British Empire. If only on

64

MY STRUGGLE

account of her community of language and Kultur with the American Union, England cannot be compared with any other State in Europe.

Hence Germany’s only hope of carrying out a sound territorial policy lay in acquiring fresh lands in Europe itself. Colonies are useless for that object if they appear unsuitable for settling Europeans in large numbers. In the Nineteenth Century, however, it was no longer possible to acquire such territory for coloniza¬ tion by peaceful methods. A colonizing policy of that kind could only be realized by means of a hard struggle, which would be far more appropriate for the sake of gaining territory in the continent near home than for lands outside Europe.

For such a policy there was only one possible ally in Europe — Great Britain. Great Britain was the only Power which could protect our rear, supposing we started a new Germanic expansion ( Germanenzug ). We should have had as much right to do this as our fore¬ fathers had.

No sacrifice would have been too great in order to gain England’s alliance. It would have meant renun¬ ciation of colonies and importance on the sea, and refraining from interference with British industry by our competition.

There was a moment when Great Britain would have let us speak to her in this sense ; for she under¬ stood very well that, owing to her increased population, Germany would have to look for some solution and find it either in Europe with Great Britain’s help, or elsewhere in the world without it.

The attempt made from London at the turn of the century to obtain a rapprochement with Germany was due first and foremost to this feeling. But the Germans were upset by the idea of “having to pull England’s chest¬ nuts out of the fire for her”, — as if an alliance were possible on any basis other than that of reciprocity. On that principle business could very well have been

MY STRUGGLE

65

done with Whitehall. British diplomacy was quite clever enough to know that nothing could be hoped for without reciprocity.

Let us imagine that Germany, with a skilful foreign policy, had played the part which Japan played in 1904 — we can hardly estimate the consequences that would have had for Germany.

There would never have been a World War.

That method, however, was never adopted at all.

There still remained the possibility : industry and world trade, sea power and colonies.

If a policy of territorial acquisition in Europe could only be pursued in alliance with Great Britain against Russia, a policy of colonies and world trade, on the other hand, was only conceivable in alliance with Russia against Great Britain. In this case they should have drawn their conclusion ruthlessly, and have sent Austria packing.

They adopted a formula of “peaceful economic conquest of the world”, which was destined to destroy for ever the policy of force which they had pursued up to that time. Perhaps they were not quite certain of themselves at times when quite incomprehensible threats came across from Great Britain. Finally they made up their minds to build a fleet, not for the purpose of attacking and destroying, but to defend the “world- peace” and for the “peaceful conquest of the world”. Thus they were constrained to maintain it on a modest scale, not only as regards numbers, but also as regards the tonnage of individual ships and their armaments, so as to make it evident that their final aim was a peaceful one.

The talk about “peaceful economic conquest of the world” was the greatest piece of folly ever set up as a leading principle in State policy, especially as they did not shrink from quoting Britain to prove that it was possible to carry it out in practice. The harm

66

MY STRUGGLE

done by our professors with their historical teaching and theories can scarcely be made good again, and it merely proves in a striking fashion how many “learn” history without understanding it or taking it in. Even in the British Isles they had had to confess to a striking refutation of the theory ; and yet no nation ever pre¬ pared better for economic conquest even with the sword, or later maintained it more ruthlessly, than the British. Is it not the hallmark of British statecraft to make economic gains out of political strength and at once to reconvert each economic gain into political power ? Thus it was a complete error to imagine that England personally was too cowardly to shed her blood in defence of her economic policy ! The fact that the British possessed no national army was no proof to the contrary ; for it is not the military form of the national forces that matters, but rather the will and determination to make use of what there is. Eng¬ land always possessed the armaments which she needed. She always fought with whatever weapons were neces¬ sary to ensure success. She fought with mercenaries as long as mercenaries were good enough ; but she seized hold of the best blood in all the nation when¬ ever such a sacrifice was needed to make victory sure, and she had always determination to fight, and was tenacious and unflinching in the conduct of her wars.

In Germany, however, as time went on they encouraged, by means of the schools, the Press and the comic papers, an idea of British life and even more so, of the Empire, which was bound to lead to the most ill-timed self-deception ; for everything became gradu¬ ally contaminated with this rubbish, and the result was a low opinion of the British, which ended by revenging itself most bitterly. This mistaken idea ran so deeply that everyone was convinced that the Englishman, as they imagined him, was a business man, both crafty and incredibly cowardly. It never occurred to our worthy professorial imparters of knowledge that

MY STRUGGLE

67

anything as vast as the British world Empire could never have been assembled and kept together merely by swindling and underhand methods. The few who gave warnings were either ignored or silenced. I remember distinctly the amazement on the faces of my comrades in arms when we came face to face with the Tommies in Flanders. After the very first days of fighting it dawned on the brain of each man that those Scotchmen did not exactly correspond with the people whom writers in comic papers and newspaper reports had thought fit to describe to us.

I began to reflect then on propaganda and the most useful forms of it.

This falsification certainly had its conveniences for those who propagated it ; they were able to demon¬ strate by examples, however incorrect they might be, the rightness of an economic conquest of the world. We were bound to succeed where the Englishman had succeeded ; whilst the fact that we were free from that so-called British perfidie was held up as a special advan¬ tage. It was hoped that it would attach the smaller nations to us and win the confidence of the larger ones.

The value of the Triple Alliance was psychologi¬ cally of little importance, since the binding force of an alliance decreases the more it confines itself to main¬ taining an existing condition. On the other hand, an alliance waxes stronger the more the individual con¬ tracting Powers are able to hope that they will gain definite, tangible advantage.

This was realized in various quarters, but unluckily not by the so-called “professionals”, Ludendorff, then a colonel on the Great General Staff, in particular, pointed out this weakness in a memorandum in 1912. Naturally the “Statesmen” refused to attach any sig¬ nificance or importance to the matter.

For Germany it was a pure piece of luck that the

68

MY STRUGGLE

War broke out in 1914 indirectly by way of Austria, and that the Habsburgs were thus forced to take part in it ; if it had happened the other way round, Ger¬ many would have been left all by herself.

The Austrian connection robbed Germany of the best and most promising prospects which alliance might have given her. In place of them, in fact, there was continually increasing tension with Russia and even Italy. In Rome feeling was universally pro- German, whilst, deep down in the heart of every single Italian, it was anti-Austrian and frequently burst out in a blaze.

In the modest company which I then frequented, I made no attempt to hide my conviction that that wretched treaty with a State doomed to destruction would lead to a catastrophic collapse of Germany, unless she managed to break loose from it while there was yet time. I never deviated for a moment from that conviction, firm as a rock, when the torrent of the World War appeared finally to have made reason¬ able reflection impossible, and the rush of enthusiasm carried along with it those highly placed ones, whose sole duty was cold consideration of realities. Even when I myself was at the front, whenever the problem was discussed I expressed my opinion that the quicker the alliance was broken off the better it would be for the German nation, and that to sacrifice the Habsburg Monarchy would be no sacrifice for Germany, if she could thereby reduce the number of her enemies, since the millions of steel helmets had not been assembled in order to maintain a decrepit dynasty, but to save the German nation.

Before the War it seemed at times as though there were signs that in one camp at least there was a slight doubt as to the correctness of the alliance policy which was being pursued. From time to time Conservative circles in Germany started to warn against too much

MY STRUGGLE

69

trustfulness, but, like everything else that was reason¬ able, it was thrown to the winds. They were con¬ vinced that they were on the road to conquer the world, that success would be unlimited and that nothing would have to be sacrificed.

Once more the £ ‘non-professionals” had nothing left but to look on silently whilst the “professionals” were marching straight to destruction, drawing the innocent nation after them like the rat-catcher of Hamelin.

The victorious march of German technical skill and industry, the swelling triumphs of German trade, caused them to forget the fact that all this was only possible on the assumption of a strong state. Many, on the contrary, went so far as to proclaim their con¬ viction that the State owed its life simply to these developments, that it was first and foremost an economic institution and should be conducted accord¬ ing to the rules of economics, so that it should really depend for its existence on commerce, a condition which was held to be far the healthiest and most natural of all conditions.

The State, however, has nothing to do with any definite economic conception or economic develop¬ ment.

It is not an assembly of commercial negotiators during a period with defined limits for the purpose of carrying out economic objects, but the organization of a community, homogeneous in nature and feeling, for the better furtherance and maintenance of their type, and the fulfilment of the destiny marked out for them by Providence. This and nothing else is the object and significance of a State.

The Jewish State never had boundaries, as far as space was concerned ; it was unlimited as regards

7°

MY STRUGGLE

space, but bound down by its conception of itself as a race. That people, therefore, was always a State within the State. It was one of the cleverest tricks ever invented when that State was stamped with “religion” and so assured of the tolerance, which the Aryan is always ready to extend to religious creeds. For the Mosaic religion is really nothing but a doctrine for the preservation of the Jewish race. Hence it embraces nearly every branch of sociological, political and economic knowledge which could ever come into question in connection with it.

Whenever there was an advance in political power in Germany, business also began to look up ; whereas, whenever business monopolized the life of our people and smothered the virtues of the mind, the State broke down again and dragged business along with it.

And yet if we ask ourselves what the forces are which make and maintain States, we find that they come under one single denomination : ability and readiness to sacrifice the individual for the sake of the community. That these virtues have no relation to economics is obvious from the simple realization that man never sacrifices himself for purposes of business — i.e., men do not die for business, but for ideals. Nothing displayed the Englishman’s psychological superiority in readiness of a national ideal better than the reasons he put forward for fighting. Whilst we fought for daily bread, England fought for “freedom” — not her own, but that of the little nations. In Germany they mocked at this effrontery and got angry, proving thereby how thoughtless and stupid Germany’s so-called Statecraft had become before the War. We had not the slightest conception of the nature of the forces which could lead men to their death of their own free will and volition.

As long as the German people continued to think in 1914 that they were fighting for ideals, they stood their ground ; but the moment it became evident that

MY STRUGGLE

they were merely fighting for their daily bread, they were glad to throw up the sponge.

Our intelligent “Statesmen”, however, were amazed at this change of temper.

The pre-war belief that it was possible to lay the world open for the German nation, or indeed conquer it, by the peaceful method of a policy of trade and colonization, was a classic sign that the genuine virtues which make and maintain States, and all the resulting insight, will-power and determination to accomplish great things, were gone. By the law of Nature, the immediate result of this was the World War with all its consequences.

I now for the first time turned these questions over in my mind coloured, as they were, by my position towards Germany’s alliance policy and the economic policy of the Empire from 1912 to 1914, and I found that the solution of the riddle lay more and more cer¬ tainly in that force with which I had made acquaint¬ ance, but from quite another standpoint, in Vienna : the doctrine and world-view of Marxism and its organizing influence.

For the first time I began to consider how an attempt might be made to master that world-pestilence.

I studied the aims, the struggles and the success of Bismarck’s special legislation. My study gradually gave me principles of granite for my own convictions — so much so that since then I have never had to think of changing my personal views on the question. I made also a deep study of the relation between Marxism and Judaism.

In 1913 and 1914 I began expressing my convictions in various circles, which to-day are in part still true to the National-Socialist movement, that the question of the future for the German nation is that of the destruc¬ tion of Marxism.

The internal decline of the German nation had

72

MY STRUGGLE

begun a long time before that, but, as in life, people were not clear about the destroyer of their existence. They sometimes tried treatment for the disease, but they often mistook the symptoms for the cause. As no one knew that or wished to know it, the fight against Marxism was worth no more than the nonsensical recommendations of a quack.

CHAPTER V

THE WORLD WAR

IN my excitable youth nothing had worried me so much as having been born in a time when it was evident that the only people who had temples erected in their honour were the merchants and State officials. The waves of political events appeared to have calmed down to such an extent that the future seemed really to belong to “peaceful competition between nations’’ , i.e., quiet mutual swindling stopping short of violent methods. The various States began showing favour to enterprises, which cut the ground from under each other, stole each other’s customers and contracts, and sought to take advantage of each other in every possible way, the whole scene being staged with a din as harm¬ less as it was noisy. This development appeared not only to be permanent, but it seemed — with universal approval — to be going to re-model the world at one blow as a single vast warehouse, under Jewish bosses, in the vestibules of which busts of the craftiest pro¬ fiteers and the least go-ahead officials would be stored to all eternity.

Why could I not have been born a hundred years earlier ? Somewhere about the time of the War of Liberation, when a man was still worth something, quite apart from “business” ?

When the news of the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand reached Munich (I was in the house at the time and only heard vaguely how it all happened), my first fear was that the bullets were per¬ haps those of the pistols of German students who, being exasperated by the favour which the Heir Presumptive

73

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MY STRUGGLE

perpetually showed to the Slavs, desired to free the German nation from their domestic enemy. I could quickly imagine what the result of that would be : a fresh wave of persecution, which would now be “explained and justified” before the whole world. But when immediately afterwards I heard the names of the alleged criminals and that they were known to be Serbs, I began to feel a slight horror at the ven¬ geance of inscrutable destiny.

The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen a victim to the bullets of Slav fanatics.

An injustice is being done to-day to the Vienna Government, when reproaches are showered upon it regarding the form and contents of the Ultimatum which it issued. No other Power in the world could have acted differently in a similar situation. On her southern border Austria possessed an inexorable and mortal enemy, who at constantly shorter intervals challenged the Monarchy and would never have given over till the favourable moment arrived for laying the Empire in ruins. There was good reason to fear that this would come to pass as soon as the old Emperor died ; when that happened the Monarchy might per¬ haps no longer be able to offer serious resistance. In recent years the State had depended on the life of Francis Joseph so greatly that the death of that aged personification of it would, in the eyes of the mass of the people, be equivalent to the death of the State itself

Yes, it is really unjust to Government circles in Vienna to reproach them with having forced on the War which might perhaps have been avoided other¬ wise. It could not have been avoided, but it might have been postponed for one, or perhaps two, years at most. But the curse of German as well as Austrian diplomacy was that they had always tried to put off the inevitable day of reckoning, till they were forced to

MY STRUGGLE

75

strike the blow at an hour which was unfavourable. We may be certain that any further attempt to pre¬ serve peace would have brought on the War at a moment still less favourable.

For many years Social Democracy had been agi¬ tating in Germany for war against Russia in the most disgraceful fashion, whereas the Centre Party, for reasons of religion, had pivoted German policy mainly on Austria-Hungary. Now the consequences of that error had to be endured. What happened was bound to happen and could under no circumstances be averted. The guilt of the German Government lay in the fact that, merely for the sake of preserving peace, it missed the favourable moment for action, got entangled in an alliance for maintaining peace in the world, and thus finally became the victim of a world coalition which opposed the urge to maintain peace in the world with a determination to bring on a world war.

A war for freedom had broken out, vaster than the world had ever yet seen.

Scarcely had the news of the outrage become known in Munich when two ideas at once entered my head ; first that war was absolutely inevitable, and secondly, that the Habsburg State would be forced to stick to its alliance ; for what I had most feared was the possi¬ bility that one day Germany herself, perhaps directly because of that alliance, would slip into a conflict of which Austria might have been the immediate cause, and that the Austrian State, for reasons of internal politics, would not develop sufficient resolution to come to the assistance of its ally. The old State had to fight, whether it wished to or not.

My own attitude towards the conflict was both simple and clear. In my eyes it was not Austria fighting to get a little satisfaction out of Serbia, but Germany fighting for her life, the German nation for

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its “to be or not to be55, its freedom and future. It would have to follow in Bismarck’s footsteps ; young Germany must again defend what the fathers had heroically fought for from Weissenburg to Sedan and Paris. But if the struggle was to be a victorious one, our people would by their own force take their place again among the great nations, and then the German Reich could stand as a mighty guardian of peace, without the necessity to curtail its children’s daily bread for the sake of this peace.

On the third of August, I addressed a petition to His Majesty King Ludwig III to be allowed to serve in a Bavarian regiment. The Cabinet Office during those days certainly had its hands pretty full, and my joy was all the greater when my petition was granted the same day.

Now began for me, as for every German, the greatest and most unforgettable period of my life on earth. Compared with the events of that mighty struggle, all the past fell into empty oblivion. I think with pride and sorrow of those days, and back to the weeks of the beginning of our nation’s heroic fight, in which kind fortune allowed me to take part.

Thus it went on from year to year ; horror had taken the place of the romance of fighting. Enthus¬ iasm gradually cooled off, and the glorious exuberance was drowned in the agony of death. A time came when each man had to struggle between the urge of self-preservation and the call of duty. By the winter of 1915-16 this struggle was over in myself. My will was at last victorious. In the early days I was able to join in the attack with cheers and laughter ; now I was calm and determined. Thus I went on until the end. Only thus could fate move forward to the last test without breaking my nerve or loosening my reason.

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77

The young volunteer had grown into an old soldier. This change had taken place throughout the army. The perpetual fighting aged and hardened it, and broke any who could not stand up against the storm.

Then only could one form a judgment of that army. After two-three years, during which it was continually fighting one battle after another, against superior odds in numbers and weapons, undergoing hunger and privations — that was the time to consider the virtue of that army.

Though thousands of years pass, none may talk of heroism without thinking of the German Army in the World War. Through the mists of the past the grey steel helmet will appear, never flinching or turn¬ ing aside, a monument of immortality. As long as there are Germans left, they will reflect that these men were once sons of their nation.

In those days I cared nothing for politics, but I could not help forming an opinion on certain mani¬ festations which affected the whole nation, but con¬ cerned us soldiers most of all.

I was angered by the way it was considered right to regard Marxism, the final and perpetual aim of which was the destruction of all non-Jewish national States, saw to its disgust in those days of July, 1914, how the German working class, which it had been assiduously ensnaring, had woken up and was ranging itself more and more rapidly hour by hour in the service of the Fatherland. In a few days the fog and deception of that infamous national betrayal had dis¬ sipated into thin air, and the gang of Jewish leaders suddenly found themselves alone and deserted, just as though not one trace was left of the folly and madness, with which the masses had been inoculated for sixty years, was left in existence. That was a bad moment for the betrayers of German Labour. As soon, how¬ ever, as the leaders realized the danger threatening

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them, they hastily drew the Tarn-cap of lies over their ears and impudently mimicked the national uprising.

But now was the moment to attack the whole treasonable association of those Jewish poisoners of our nation. Now — because the German workers had rediscovered the road to nationality — it should have been the Government’s anxious care to root out with¬ out mercy those who were agitating against nationality.

At a time when the best were falling at the front, those who stayed might at least have extirpated the vermin.

Instead of this His Majesty the Emperor in person stretched out his hand to the old criminals, gave them his protection and enabled them to maintain their association.

Every general world theory ( Weltanschauung ), whether religious or political in nature, it is sometimes hard to say where one begins and the other ends — fights not so much negatively to destroy the opposing world of ideas as positively to establish its own. Thus its struggle lies in attack rather than defence. Hence the definiteness of its aim gives it an advantage, for that aim is the victory of its own ideas, whereas it is hard to define when the negative aim of destroying the hostile doctrine can be said to be attained and assured. Hence a world theory is more definite in plan, as well as more powerful in attack than in defence, for the final decision lies in attack and not in defence.

Every attempt to combat a world theory by means of force comes to grief in the end, so long as the struggle fails to take the form of aggression in favour of a new intellectual conception. It is only when two world theories are wrestling on equal terms that brute force, persistent and ruthless, can bring about a decision by arms in favour of the side which it supports.

It was on this that the fight against Marxism had failed up to that time. It was the reason why Bis¬ marck’s legislation regarding Socialism failed in the

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end in spite of everything, and was bound to fail. It lacked the platform of a new world theory, to estab¬ lish which the fight might have been fought ; for only the proverbial wisdom of high State officials could find it possible to imagine that the twaddle about so-called “State authority’5 or “order and tranquillity” are a sufficient inducement to fight to the death.

In 1914 a contest against Social Democracy was in fact conceivable, but the lack of any practical substi¬ tute made it doubtful how long such a contest could have been maintained successfully. In that respect there was a serious blank.

Long before the War I held this opinion, and for that reason I could not make up my mind to join any one of the Parties then existing. As the World War went on I was confirmed in my opinion still further by the obvious impossibility, directly due to the lack of a movement which would have to be much more than a “Parliamentary” Party, of resuming the fight ruth¬ lessly against Social Democracy.

I frequently talked about it to my more intimate comrades. It was then that I first conceived the idea of becoming an active politician later on ; and this was the reason why I now often assured the small circle of my friends that I wished to work after the War as a speaker, in addition to my own proper profession.

I think that it was very serious in my mind.

CHAPTER VI

WAR PROPAGANDA

AT the time when I was following all political l \ events with attention, the business of propa¬ ganda was always of extreme interest to me. In it I saw an instrument which the Socialist- Marxist organ¬ ization had long controlled with masterly skill and employed to the full. I soon came to realize that the right use of propaganda was a regular art, which was practically unknown to the bourgeois Parties. The Christian-Socialist movement alone, in Lueger’s time especially, applied the instrument with a certain vir¬ tuosity and owed many of their successes to it.

Had we any propaganda at all ?

Alas ! I can only reply no. All that was under¬ taken in that direction was so inadequate and wrong¬ headed from the start as to be not of the slightest use — sometimes it did actual harm.

Insufficient in form, wrong psychologically ; there can be no other outcome of a systematic examination of the German war propaganda. They even seem to have been uncertain as to the first question : Is pro¬ paganda a means or an end ?

It is a means, and must be judged from the point of view of the objective it is to serve. It must be suit¬ ably shaped so as to assist that objective. It is also clear that the importance of the objective may vary from the standpoint of general necessity, and that the essential qualities of propaganda must vary so as to be in harmony with it. The objective we fought for, as the War went on, was the noblest and most compelling which is imaginable to man. It was the freedom and

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81

independence of our nation, security for future nourish¬ ment and — the nation’s honour.

As regards the question of humanity, Moltke has said that in war the essential is to bring the matter to a finish quickly, and that the severest methods conduce most effectually to that end.

Propaganda in the War was a means to an end. It was a struggle for the life of the German nation ; therefore propaganda could only be founded on prin¬ ciples which were of value to that objective. The crudest weapons were humane, if they conduced to a speedier victory, and indeed they were the only method which helped the nation to secure a dignity of freedom.

This was the only possible attitude to adopt towards the question of war propaganda in a life and death struggle such as this.

If those in high positions had been clear about the foregoing there would have been no uncertainty as to the form and employment of this weapon ; for it is nothing more nor less than a weapon, but a really terrible one in the hands of one who understands it.

All propaganda should be popular and should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address. Thus it must sink its mental elevation deeper in proportion to the numbers of the mass whom it has to grip. If it is, as it is with propaganda for carrying through a war, a matter of gathering a whole nation within its circle of influence, there cannot be enough attention paid to avoidance of too high a level of intellectuality.

The receptive ability of the masses is very limited, their understanding small ; on the other hand, they have a great power of forgetting. This being so, all effective propaganda must be confined to very few points, which must be brought out in the form of

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slogans, until the very last man is enabled to compre¬ hend what is meant by any slogan. If this principle is sacrificed to the desire to be many-sided, it will dis¬ sipate the effectual working of the propaganda, for the crowd will be unable to digest or retain the material that is offered them. It will, moreover, weaken and hnally cancel its own effectiveness.

It was, for instance, fundamentally wrong to paint the enemy in a ridiculous light, as the Austrian and German comic papers made a point of doing in their propaganda ; wrong because, when the enemy was actually met with in the flesh, it was bound at once to produce on our men a totally different impression of him, which subsequently took its revenge in a most terrible manner ; for the German soldier, under the direct impression of the enemy’s power of resistance, now felt he had been deceived by the fabricators of his information up to that moment, and instead of strength¬ ening or at least conhrming his fighting keenness, it did the opposite. The men broke down under it.

On the other hand, the British and American war propaganda was psychologically correct. By display¬ ing the German to their own people as a barbarian and a Hun, they were preparing the individual soldier for the horrors of war, and so helped to spare him dis¬ appointments. The most terrible of the weapons which now came against him were now, for him, merely a confirmation of the information which he had already received and reinforced his faith in the truth of his Government’s assertions, whilst it heightened his rage and hatred against the villainous enemy.

Thus the British soldier never felt that the informa¬ tion he got from home was untrue, and this, alas ! was so much the case with the German, that he ended by rejecting all that came from that quarter as pure swindle and Krampf.

What, for instance, should we say about a poster

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advertising a new soap, if it described other soaps as being “good” ? We should shake our heads over it.

It was fundamentally wrong, when discussing the subject of war guilt, to suggest that Germany could not be counted as alone responsible for the outbreak of that catastrophe ; the proper thing would have been to lay the burden of it without cease upon the enemy, even if this did not correspond with the true course of events, as was nevertheless the actual fact.

The masses are in no position to distinguish where foreign illegality begins and our own ends.

An immense majority of the people are so feminine in nature and point of view, that their thoughts and actions are governed more by feeling and sentiment than by reasoned consideration.

This sentiment is, however, not complicated, but very simple and consistent. It does not differentiate much, but it is either positive or negative, love or hate, truth or lies, never half one and half the other, and so on.

This was realized by the British propaganda with very real genius. In England there were no half statements which might have given rise to doubts.

The proof of their brilliant understanding of the primitiveness of sentiment in the mass of the people lay in the publication of horrors, which suited this condition and both cleverly and ruthlessly prepared the ground for moral solidity at the front even when great defeats came along, and further, in nailing down the German enemy as being the sole cause of the War — a lie, the unqualified impudence of which, and the way it was put before the nation, took account of the sentimental and extremist nature of the public, and so gained credence.

Alteration of methods should not alter the essence of what propaganda is meant to effect, but its purport must be the same at the end as at the start. The

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slogan may have various lights thrown upon it, but any treatment applied to it should always finish with the slogan. Propaganda can work solidly and con¬ sistently in no other way.

The success of any advertisement, whether in business or politics, is due to the continuity and con¬ sistency with which it is employed.

The example of enemy propaganda was typical of this also. It confined itself to few points of view, was addressed solely to the masses, and was pursued with untiring perseverance. Throughout the whole War use was made of the basic ideas and forms of expression found to be right at the beginning, and even the slightest alteration was never considered. At first it appeared lunatic from the impudence of its assertions — later on it became unpleasant and was finally believed. At the end of four and a half years revolu¬ tion broke out in Germany, and its war-cries were inspired by the enemy’s war propaganda.

The British understood yet another thing — that this intellectual weapon can only be used successfully with the masses, but that, if successful, it richly repays what it costs.

Propaganda counted with them as a weapon of the first class, whereas with us it was the last way for officeless politicians to make a living and a tiny berth for modest heroes.

Taken all in all, its success was just nil.

CHAPTER VII

THE REVOLUTION

IT was in the summer of 1915 that the enemy began dropping leaflets on us from the air.

Their contents were almost always the same, although there were variations in the form of presenta¬ tion : Distress was continually on the increase in Germany ; the War was never going to stop, while the prospect of winning it was growing ever fainter ; the people at home were yearning for peace, but ‘ ‘militarism” and the Kaiser would not allow it ; the whole world — to whom this was well known — was therefore not waging war against the German nation, but solely against the man who alone was responsible, the Kaiser ; so that the War would not come to an end until that enemy of peaceful humanity was removed. But the liberal and democratic nations, after the War was over, would receive the German nation into the league of perpetual world peace, which was assured once “Prussian militarism” was destroyed.

Most of the men merely laughed at these tempta¬ tions.

One point in this kind of propaganda should be noted. On every part of the front where there were Bavarians it made a dead set at Prussia, declaring not only that Prussia was the real guilty party, but that in the Allied countries there was no enmity at all, par¬ ticularly against Bavaria ; there was, however, no possibility of helping her as long as she joined in serving Prussian militarism and in pulling its chestnuts out of the fire.

Even in 1915 this kind of persuasion really began

85

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to achieve a definite effect. Feeling against Prussia amongst the troops grew up quite visibly — and the authorities never once took measures to stem it.

By 1916 the complaining letters from home were having a direct influence, and it was now no longer especially necessary for the enemy to disseminate them at the front by means of leaflets from the air. The silly letters written by German women cost hundreds of thousands of men their lives in the period which followed.

There were already objectionable phenomena. The front cursed and groused and was angry and discon¬ tented — sometimes rightly so. Whilst they starved and suffered, their people at home sat in poverty, whilst others had more than enough and revelled. Even at the battle-front all was not as it should be in this respect.

Grises easily arose, but these were 4 ‘domestic5 5 events. The same man who had groused and grumbled did his duty diligently a few minutes later as if it was quite natural. A company which had been discontented clung on to the bit of trench which it had to defend as though Germany’s fate depended on those few hundred metres of mud-holes. At the front it was still the old glorious army of heroes.

I was wounded in October, 1916, but happily had been brought back and was ordered home to Germany by ambulance train. Two years had passed since I last saw my home, an almost endless time under such cir¬ cumstances. I went to a hospital near Berlin. What a change !

Alas ! the world was a new one in other respects. The spirit of the army at the front seemed to have no place here. I came across for the first time something which was so far unheard of at the front — boasting of one’s own cowardice !

As soon as I was properly fit to walk I obtained

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leave to visit Berlin. Bitter poverty was evident everywhere. The city of millions was starving. There was much discontent. In some houses where soldiers visited, the tone was much the same as in the hospital. One got the impression that those fellows purposely looked for such spots in which to air their opinions.

In Munich conditions were far, far worse. When I had recovered and was discharged from hospital I was sent to the reserve battalion, and I felt I hardly recognized the town again. Anger, discontent and curses wherever I went. The soldiers returned from the front had certain peculiarities, explicable from their service at the front, which were quite incompre¬ hensible to the elderly commanders of reserve units, but were obvious for an officer who had himself just come back. The respect paid by the men to such a one was quite different from that given to an officer at the rear. With these exceptions the general spirit was wretched. Scrimshanking almost counted as a sign of higher intelligence, devotion to duty as a mark of weakness and narrow-mindedness. The offices were full of Jews. Almost every clerk was a Jew, and almost every Jew a clerk. I was amazed at this mass of combatants of the chosen race, and could not help comparing it with the sparseness with which they were represented at the front.

In the business world it was still worse. Here the Jewish nation had become actually “indispensable”.

The munitions strike at the end of 1917 did not produce the hoped-for result in starving the front of arms ; it collapsed too quickly for the lack of munitions, by itself — as was intended — to condemn the army to defeat. But how great and how disgraceful was the moral harm which had been started !

First, what was the army going on fighting for, if even the people at home did not desire victory ? For whom these vast sacrifices and privations ? The soldier

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has to fight for victory, at home they are striking against it !

Secondly, what effect was it having on the enemy ?

In the winter of 1917-18 dark clouds covered the firmament of the Allied world.

All the hopes founded on Russia were at an end. The Ally, who had offered the biggest blood sacrifice at the altar of their joint interests, had reached the end of his strength and lay at the mercy of his strong assailant. Fear and gloom entered the hearts of the soldiers, who up to then had been possessed by blind faith. They feared the coming spring. For, seeing that they had so far failed to break the German when he could place only part of his forces on the Western front, how were they to count on victory now that the undivided forces of that tremendous State of heroes appeared to be gathering for an attack against the West ?

At the moment that the German divisions received their final orders for the great attack, the General Strike broke out in Germany.

The world was dumbfounded at first. Then the enemy propaganda breathed again and pounced on this help at the twelfth hour. Here at one blow was the means for reviving the sinking confidence of the allied soldiers, for representing the chance of victory as being now a certainty once more, and for turning the terrified depression with regard to coming events into determined confidence.

British, French and American newspapers started sowing this conviction in the hearts of their readers, whilst immensely clever propaganda was used to excite the troops at the front.

“Germany on the Eve of Revolution ! An Allied Victory Inevitable !” This was the best medicine to set the wavering Tommy or Poilu on his feet again.

All this was the result of the munitions strike. It

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revived faith in victory in the enemy nations and did away with that crippling depression on the allied front ; as a consequence thousands of German soldiers paid for it with their blood. But the promoters of that rascally and disgraceful strike were those who expected to obtain the biggest posts under the State in revolu¬ tionary Germany.

It was my luck to be in the first two and the last offensives. They made on me the most tremendous impressions that ever came to me in the whole of my life ; tremendous, because for the last time the struggle lost its character of a defensive and became an offensive, as it was in 1914.

At the height of the summer of 1918 it was stiffingly hot all over the front. There were quarrels going on at home. What about ? In the various units of the army there were many rumours. It seemed that the War was now hopeless, and only fools could think we were going to win.

It was not the nation, but the capitalists and the Monarchy which were interested in going on with it. This was the news from home, and it was discussed at the front.

At first the front reacted to it very little. What did Universal Suffrage matter to us ? Was that what we had been fighting for for four years ?

The front, in its old stable condition, had very little use for the new war aims of Messrs. Ebert, Scheidemann, Barth, Liebknecht, etc. We could not make out why the shirkers had a right to arrogate to themselves State control of the Army.

My own political notions were fixed from the start. I loathed that whole wretched gang of Party hacks who had betrayed the nation. I had long seen clearly that that gang was not really thinking about the good of the nation, but of filling their own empty pockets.

9°

MY STRUGGLE

And the fact that they were prepared to sacrifice the whole nation for that, and to let Germany go under, if necessary, made them fit to be hanged in my eyes. Attention paid to their wishes meant sacrificing the interests of the working classes for the benefit of a lot of pickpockets ; carrying of them into practice was impossible unless we were prepared to let Germany go. Far the greater part of the Army still thought the same as I did.

In August and September the signs of decay increased more and more rapidly, although the effect of the enemy attacks were not at all to be compared with the frightfulness of our own defensive battles. In comparison with them the Somme and Flanders battles were things of the past, a ghastly memory.

By the end of September my Division, for the third time, arrived at the positions we had stormed as a young volunteer regiment.

What a memory.

Now, in the autumn of 1918, the men had become different, there was political discussion among the troops. The poison from home was beginning to have its effect here, as everywhere. The young drafts suc¬ cumbed to it altogether. They had come straight from home.

During the night of October 13-14 the British began to throw gas-shells on to the southern front before Ypres. We were still on a hill south of Werwick on the evening of October 13, when we came under a drum-fire lasting several hours, which continued through¬ out the night with more or less violence. About mid¬ night a number of us dropped out — some for ever. Towards morning I felt a pain which got worse with every quarter hour that passed, and at about seven o’clock I tottered rearwards with scorching eyes, reporting myself for the last time in that war.

MY STRUGGLE

9i

A few hours later my eyes had turned into burning coals, and it was all dark around me. I was sent to hospital at Pasewalk in Pomerania, and whilst there I was destined to see the Revolution.

Bad rumours kept on coming in from the Navy, which was said to be in a ferment, but this seemed to me to be something born of the excited imagination of a few youths rather than a matter affecting large numbers of men. In hospital everyone talked of the end of the war, which they hoped was swiftly approach¬ ing, but no one imagined it was to come immediately. I was unable to read the newspapers.

In November the general tension increased. Then one day the disaster came upon us suddenly and with¬ out warning. Sailors arrived in lorries and called on all to revolt, a few Jewish youths being the leaders in that struggle for the “freedom, beauty and dignity” of our national life. Not one of them had ever been to the front.

The following days brought with them the worst realization of my life. The rumours grew more and more definite. What I had imagined to be a local affair was apparently a general revolution. In addition to all this, distressing news came back from the front. They wanted to capitulate. Yes — was such a thing possible ?

On November 10th the aged pastor came to the hospital for a short address ; then we heard every¬ thing.

I was present and was profoundly affected. The good old man seemed to be trembling when he told us that the House of Hohenzollern was to wear the German Imperial crown no more — that the Fatherland had become a Republic.

So all had been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations, in vain the starvation and thirst for many endless months, in vain the hours we spent doing

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our duty, gripped by the fear of death, and in vain the death of two millions of men !

And our country ?

But — was this the only sacrifice we should be called on to endure ? Was the Germany of the past worth less than we thought ? Had she no obligation owing to her own history ? Were we worthy to clothe our¬ selves in the glory of the past ? In what light could this act be presented for justification to future genera¬ tions ?

Miserable, depraved criminals !

The more I tried in that hour to get clear ideas about that tremendous event, the more did I blush with burning rage and shame. What was all the pain of my eyes in comparison with this misery ?

There were horrible days and worse nights to follow. I knew that all was lost. In those nights my hatred arose against the originators of that act.

The Emperor William had been the first German Emperor to offer the hand of friendship to the leaders of Marxism, little guessing that scoundrels are without honour. Whilst they held the Imperial hand in theirs, their other hand was already feeling for the dagger.

With Jews there is no bargaining — there is merely the hard <c Either — or”.

I resolved to become a politician.

CHAPTER VIII

THE START OF MY POLITICAL LIFE

AT the end of November, 1918, I returned to ^ Munich. I re-joined the reserve battalion of my regiment, which was in the hands of the “Soldiers’ Councils”. The whole thing was so repulsive to me that I promptly resolved to get out of it as quickly as I could. Accompanied by my faithful comrade in the War, Schmiedt Ernst, I went to Traunstein and stayed there until the camp was broken up.

In March, 1919, we returned to Munich.

The situation was an impossible one, and tended irresistibly towards a further extension of the Revolu¬ tion. Eisner’s death only hastened developments and led eventually to a dictatorship of the Councils, better described as transitional control by the Jews, which was the original aim and idea of those who originated the Revolution. At that period endless schemes drove through my head.

In the course of the new Revolution my earliest actions drew on me the ill-will of the Central Council. On March 27th, 1919, I was arrested early in the morning, but when I presented my rifle at them, the three youths lost courage and returned the way they had come.

A few days after the liberation of Munich I was summoned to attend a Commission to inquire into the revolutionary events in the 2nd Infantry Regiment. That was my first incursion into more or less pure politics.

A few weeks after that I was ordered to attend a “course” for members of the Defence Force. The

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intention underlying this was to supply the soldier with definite principles to guide his thoughts as citizens of a State. As far as I was concerned, its value consisted in the fact that I should be able to make the acquaintance of a few comrades who thought as I did, and with whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of the moment. We were all more or less convinced that Germany could not be saved from the collapse, which was becoming more and more imminent, by the perpetrators of the crime of November, the Centre and Social Democratic Parties — also that the so-called “Bourgeois-national” groups could, with the best will in the world, never be capable of repairing the damage which had been done.

This formation of a new Party was discussed in our small circle. The ground principles, which we con¬ templated, were the same which were realized later on in the German Workers’ Party. The title of the new Movement was to point from the start to the possibility of penetrating the mass of the people ; for, if it lacked this quality, the whole work seemed pointless and super¬ fluous. So we decided to call it the “Social Revolu¬ tionary Party” — because the social ideas of the new foundation did really involve a revolution.

There was, moreover, an even deeper reason. All the attention I had devoted earlier in my life to economic problems had always left me more or less on the edge of the ideas arising out of my consideration of social problems. It was not until later that I widened these boundaries as a result of my consideration of Germany’s policy of alliances. The latter was very largely the result of a false estimate of economics, and vagueness as to the principles on which the German nation was to be provided with food in the future. These ideas were based on the assumption that in all cases capital was merely an outcome of labour, and moreover was, like labour itself, the basis for correcting all the factors which can either further or restrict human activity. This, then, was the national significance of capital —

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that it depended so entirely on the greatness, freedom and power of the State, i.e., the nation, that the union of the two by itself was bound to lead to the State and the nation being helped forward by capital, by the simple method of maintaining and increasing itself. This dependent connection of capital with the free, independent State obliged the latter to aim at making the nation free and powerful.

Thus the State’s duty towards capital was com¬ paratively simple and clear. It merely had to see that capital remained the servant of the State and did not contemplate obtaining control of the nation. In taking this attitude the State could confine itself to two objects : maintenance of efficient national and independent administration on the one hand, and of the social rights of the workers on the other. I had been unable before then to distinguish as clearly as I should have liked between capital, purely the final outcome of creative labour, and capital which owned its existence exclu¬ sively to speculation. I had not known how to start thinking about it.

The subject was now being dealt with exhaustively by one of the various lecturers in the course which I mentioned above — Gottfried Feder.

Immediately after listening to Feder’s first lecture, the idea entered my brain that I had at last discovered the road to one of the essential principles on which a new Party might be founded.

I recognized at once that it was a question here of a theoretic truth which would be of immense importance to the future of the German nation. The sharp sever¬ ance of Stock Exchange capital from the finances of the nation offered a possibility of combating inter¬ nationalization of Germany’s financial administration, without having to threaten the principle of an indepen¬ dent national existence with a struggle against capital. Germany’s development was too clearly before my eyes for me not to be aware that the hardest fight would

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have to be fought out not against the enemy nations but against international capital. Feder’s lecture gave me a splendid war-cry for the coming struggle.

In this case also later developments have proved how correct our feeling was at that period. We are no longer derided by our foolish bourgeois politicians ; even they realize to-day, unless they lie in their throats, that international capital was not only the greatest of war-agitators, but that, even now that the War is over, it spares no pains to turn the peace into a Hell.

For myself and all other true National-Socialists there is only one doctrine : Nation and Fatherland.

What we have to fight for is security for the existence and increase of our race and our nation, nourishment of its children and purity of its blood, freedom and independence for the Fatherland, and that our nation may be able to ripen for the fulfilment of the mission appointed for them by the Creator of the Universe.

I was beginning to learn afresh, and only now came to a right comprehension of the teachings and intentions of the Jew, Karl Marx. Only now did I properly understand his Capital , and equally also the struggle of Social Democracy against the economics of the nation, and that its aim is to prepare the ground for the domina¬ tion of the truly international capital of the financiers and the Stock Exchange.

In another way also this course produced great results. One day I announced my intention to speak. One of those taking part thought he would break a lance for the Jews and started to defend them in a long argument. This roused me to opposition. An overwhelming majority of those present took my side. The result was, however, that a few days later I was ordered to join a Munich regiment, nominally as instructor !

At that time discipline was rather slack amongst the troops. They were suffering from the aftermath of the

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period of Soldiers’ Councils. It was only by degrees and cautiously that the transition from obedience “by consent” — the pretty way they described the pigsty under Kurt Eisner — over to military discipline and subordination could be effected. In the same way the troops had to learn to feel and think of themselves as members of the nation and the Fatherland. My new activities lay in this direction. I started them full of love and keenness.

I may claim some success ; in the course of my addresses I won hundreds, nay, thousands, of my com¬ rades back to their nation and Fatherland. I “nation¬ alized” the troops and was able so to help generally to strengthen discipline.

Moreover, I made the acquaintance of a number of comrades who thought as I did and who joined me later on inlaying the foundations of the new Movement.

G

CHAPTER IX

THE GERMAN WORKERS’ PARTY

ONE day I received orders from my Headquarters to go and find out what was going on in a society which was apparently political, and which was to hold a meeting during the next few days, under the name of the “German Workers’ Party” ; Gottfried Feder was to speak at it. I was to go to the meeting and have a look at the people, and then make a report.

The curiosity felt in the Army regarding political parties was more than comprehensible. The Revolu¬ tion had given the soldiers a right to be active in politics, and all of them, down to the most inexperienced, made full use of it. But it was not until the Centre and Social Democratic Parties realized to their sorrow that the sympathies of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolutionary Parties towards the National Movement and resuscitation of the country that they saw cause for withdrawing the franchise from the Army and prohibiting its taking a hand in politics.

The bourgeoisie, which was really suffering from senile weaknesses, thought in all seriousness that the Army would return to its former condition of being simply part of the defences of Germany, whilst the idea of the Centre and the Marxists was merely to draw the dangerous poison-tooth of nationalism, without which an Army is nothing but a perpetual police force and is no longer a military force, capable of withstanding an enemy ; this was amply proved in the years that followed.

I decided to attend the above-mentioned meeting of this Party, of which I had had no interior knowledge at all.

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I was glad when Feder’s discourse was over. I had seen enough and was preparing to depart, when the announcement that anyone might now speak induced me to stay. Nothing worth remarking seemed to be happening, until suddenly a “professor” rose to speak, who threw doubts on the correctness of Feder’s reasoning, and then — after Feder had replied very well to him — suddenly appealed to the “basic of facts” and took on himself to suggest that the young Party was the one best adapted to take up the struggle for cutting Bavaria loose from Prussia. The man had the impudence to assert that, if that happened, German-Austria would immediately join up with Bavaria, that the Peace would then be greatly improved for Germany, and other like nonsense. On that I simply had to apply for leave to speak and tell the learned gentleman my opinion on that point — so successfully that the chairman ran out of the building like a drenched poodle before I had finished.

During the day I thought more than once about the matter and was prepared to drop it for good, but to my astonishment less than a week later I received a post-card to say that I was admitted as a member of the German Workers’ Party ; I was also invited to attend a committee meeting of that Party on the following Wednesday.

I was more than astonished at this method of getting members and did not know whether to be annoyed or to laugh at it. I had never imagined myself joining a ready-made Party ; I wanted to found one for myself. Truly, the notion had never occurred to me.

I was just going to send my answer in writing to the authors of the invitation, when curiosity had its way, and I resolved to be there on the day mentioned in order to explain my reasons by word of mouth.

Wednesday arrived. I was rather taken aback on being told that the President of the Society for the Reich was to be present in person. I wanted to

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postpone my declaration for a bit. At last he appeared. It was the man who had been leading speaker when Feder gave his lecture.

This made me curious again and I stayed to see what would happen. At any rate, I learned the names of these gentlemen. The President for the organization in the Reich was a Herr Harrer, the Munich Chairman was Anton Drexler.

The Minutes of the last meeting were read and a vote of thanks given to the lecturer.

Then came the election of new members, i.e., the business of admitting myself.

I began to ask questions. Apart from a few leading principles there was nothing, no programme, not a leaflet, nothing at all in print, not even a miserable rubber stamp ; but obviously plenty of faith and good intention.

I no longer wanted to smile.

I well knew what these men were feeling ; it was a longing for a new Movement, which should be more than a Party in the accepted sense of the word.

The hardest question of my life confronted me. Was I to join in with it or abstain ?

Fate seemed to be beckoning me. I should never have joined one of the existing great Parties, and I shall explain my reasons more precisely. In my eyes it seemed an advantage that this ridiculous little band, with its handful of members, had not stiffened into an “organization”, but still offered the individual a real opening for personal activity. There was work to be done, and the smaller the Movement was, the sooner could it be pulled properly into shape. It was still possible to determine the character, objective and methods of this society, and that was quite impossible in the case of the existing great parties.

The longer I turned it over in my mind, the more the conviction grew in me that some small Movement such as this one might pave the way for the national

MY STRUGGLE

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resurrection, but that the political parties in Parliament never would, for they clung far too closely to obsolete conceptions or had an interest in propping up the new regime . For what had to be proclaimed here was a new theory of the world, and not a new election cry.

After two days of agonized meditation and question¬ ing, I finally made up my mind to take the step. It was the decisive turning point of my life. Retreat was neither possible nor desirable.

That is how I became a member of the German Workers’ Party, and was given a provisional ticket of membership, bearing the number “Seven”.

CHAPTER X

THE PREMONITORY SIGNS OF COLLAPSE IN THE

OLD EMPIRE

THE blow, from which the German Reich and nation are suffering, is so heavy, that they seem to have lost all power of feeling or reflection, as if seized with vertigo. It is hardly possible to recall the former heights, so dreamlike and unreal seem the greatness and glory of those times compared with the present misery ; which explains why men are only too easily dazzled by greatness and forget to seek for the premonitory signs of the great collapse, which, never¬ theless, must have been present in some form.

These signs were visibly present, although very few tried to glean any definite teaching from them. This is necessary to-day more than ever.

Most people new in Germany now recognize the German collapse merely by the general economic poverty and its results. Almost everyone is personally affected by it — an excellent reason for every individual to realize the catastrophe. The people as a whole connect the collapse with political, cultural or moral questions. Many lack both feeling and understanding for it.

That this is so with the masses goes without question ; but the fact that the intelligent sections of the com¬ munity regard the collapse first of all as an “economic catastrophe” and think that recovery must come from the side of economics is one of the reasons why, so far, no cure has been possible. Not until it is realized that economics can only come second, or even third, and that factors of ethics and race must come first, will

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there be understanding of the causes of the present unhappiness, or a possibility of discovering means and methods of curing it.

The easiest, and therefore the most commonly believed, reason for our misfortunes is that the loss of the War was the cause of the present rot.

Probably there are many who seriously believe this nonsense, but there are even more in whose lips such an argument is a conscious lie. This last applies to all those who are crowding round the governmental feeding trough.

Did not the apostles of world-reconciliation declare that the German defeat merely destroyed a militarism ? that the German people would rejoice in their glorious resurrection ? For was not the whole Revolution ushered in with the phrase that by it victory was with¬ held from the German standard, but that by it alone the German nation would fully attain to liberty at home and abroad ? Was this not so, you lying rascals?

It is characteristic of truly Jewish impudence that the military defeat is now put down as the cause of the collapse, whilst the central organ of all treason , the Vorwärts of Berlin , wrote that this time the German nation was not to be permitted to bring its banners home in victory ! Is this now to be taken as the cause of our collapse ?

The answer to the assertion that the loss of the War is the cause may be answered as follows :

Of course, the loss of the War had a fearful effect on the destiny of our country, but it was not a cause, but a result of causes. All intelligent and well-wishing people well know that an unhappy ending of that life and death struggle must lead to disastrous results. But there were people, unfortunately, whose reasoning powers seemed to fail them at the proper moment, or who, although they knew better, fought against that truth and denied it. They are really the guilty causes of the collapse, and not the loss of the War, as they

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now suddenly choose to maintain. For the loss of the War was merely the result of their action, and not, as they now assert, due to “bad leadership”. The enemy were not composed of cowards, they too knew how to die ; from the very first day they were more in number than the German Army, and for their technical arma¬ ments they had the whole world in their service ; and yet we cannot get rid of the fact that the German victories, which continued through four years of hard fighting against the whole world, were due, apart from all the heroism and fine organization, solely to con¬ summate leadership. The organization and leader¬ ship of the German Army were the greatest the world has ever seen. The failures lay in the limitations of human powers of resistance.

The collapse of that Army was not the cause of our present misfortunes, but merely the consequence of other crimes, one of which ushered in a further collapse, and this time an obvious one.

Are nations, in fact, ever ruined by the loss of a war, and by that alone ? This can be very briefly answered.

It is always so, if the military defeat of the nation has been due to laziness, cowardice, want of character, in fact, unworthiness on that nation’s part. If it is not so, the military defeat will become a spur to a greater recovery in future, and not the tombstone of the nation.

History provides innumerable instances to prove the correctness of this statement.

Germany’s military defeat was, alas ! not an undeserved catastrophe, but a merited chastisement of eternal retribution. The defeat was more than deserved by us.

If the front, left to itself, had really given way, and if the national disaster had been really due to failure, the German nation would have accepted the defeat in quite another spirit. They would have borne the

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misfortune which followed with clenched teeth, or would have been overwhelmed by sorrow. Rage and fury would have filled their hearts against the tricks played by fortune or against the enemy to whom destiny had given the victory. There would have been neither mirth nor dancing, cowardice would not have swelled with pride and glorified the defeat, the fighting troops would not have been mocked at and their colours dragged in the dirt ; but, above all, that disgraceful state of affairs would never have arisen which induced a British officer, Colonel Repington, to proclaim with scorn : “Every third German is a traitor.”

No — the military collapse was itself but the con¬ sequence of a series of unhealthy manifestations and of those who promoted them ; they had already been infecting the nation in times of peace. The defeat was the first visible catastrophic result of a moral poisoning, a weakening of the will to self-preservation, and of doctrines which had begun many years previously to undermine the foundations of nation and Reich.

It was natural that the whole abysmal lying spirit of Jewry and the fighting organization of Marxism should see to it that the very man should be burdened with direct responsibility for the disaster, who all by himself attempted with superhuman will and energy to divert the catastrophe which he had foreseen, and to save the nation from a period of deep pain and humiliation. By taxing Ludendorff with the responsibility for losing the World War, they took the weapon of moral justification out of the hand of the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to justice.

We may almost regard it a great stroke of luck for the German nation that the period of creeping sickness came to a head and was stemmed so suddenly in that terrible catastrophe ; for if things had happened dif¬ ferently the nation would have gone on to ruin, more

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slowly perhaps, but also more surely. The disease would have become chronic, whereas, in the acute form of the disaster, it at least became clear and obvious to the eyes of a considerable number of observers. It was not by accident that men conquered the plague more easily than tuberculosis. The first comes in terrifying waves of death and gives a shock to mankind, the other creeps on slowly ; the first induces terror, the other gradual indifference. The result is that men fight the first with the whole of their energy, whilst they try to stop consumption with feeble methods. Thus men conquered the plague, but tuberculosis conquers them. The same applies to diseases of the body politic.

In the long peace of the pre-war years certain evils appeared and were recognized as evils, although practically no attention was paid to the causes of them — with certain exceptions. These exceptions were, first and foremost, the phenomena in the economic life of the nation, which struck individual people more keenly than the evils which appeared in many other directions.

There were many signs of decay which ought to have induced serious thought.

The amazing increase of population of Germany before the War brought the question of providing the essential nourishment into a more and more prominent place in all political and economic thought and action. But, unfortunately, they could not make up their minds to go straight to the one correct solution, for they imagined they could attain their object by cheaper methods. Renunciation of the idea of acquiring fresh territory and substitution for it, of the craze for economic conquest, was bound to lead in the end to limitless and injurious industrialization.

The first and most fatal result was the enfeeblement of the agricultural class, which it brought about. In proportion as this class sank, the proletariat crowded in

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the large towns, grew in numbers, until finally equi¬ librium was utterly lost.

The violent cleavage between rich and poor now became prominent. Superfluity and poverty lived so close side by side that the consequences were bound to be deplorable. Poverty and great unemployment began to play havoc with the people and left discontent and embitterment behind them.

There were even worse phenomena involved by the industrialization of the nation. Along with the definite establishment of Commerce as mistress of the State, money became a god, whom all had to serve and before whom everyone must bow. A period of demoralization began, especially bad because it set in at a time when the nation needed more than ever heroic inspiration of the highest order at an hour when danger was pre¬ sumably menacing it. Germany ought to have been pre¬ paring to support with the sword her effort to make sure of her daily bread by means of “peaceful economic labours”.

Unfortunately, domination by money received sanc¬ tion in the very quarter which ought to have been most opposed to it. It was a particularly unhappy inspira¬ tion when His Majesty induced the nobility to enter the circle of the new finance. It must be admitted in excuse for him that even Bismarck failed to realize the danger, but in practice it drove the ideal virtues into the second place behind that of money, for it was clear that having once taken that road, the nobility of the sword would very soon have to play second fiddle to that of finance.

Before the War internationalization of German business was already on its way, travelling by the by-paths of share issues. A section of German industry did make a determined attempt to avert the danger, but in the end it fell a victim to the combined attacks of greedy capital, greatly assisted by its trusty friends, the Marxist movement.

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MY STRUGGLE

The persistent war against the “heavy industries” of Germany was the visible start of the internationalization, which was being striven for with the help of Marxism, and the only possible way of completing the work was by a victory for Marxism in the Revolution. As I write these words, success is attending the general attack on the German State Railways, which are to be turned over to the international capitalists. Thus “International” Social Democracy has once again attained one of its main objectives.

The best evidence of the success of the industrializing process in Germany is the fact that when the War was over one of the leaders of German industry and trade was able to state his opinion that commerce was the one force which could set Germany on her legs again. These words, uttered by Stinnes, caused incredible con¬ fusion ; but they were caught up and have become with startling rapidity the motto of all the humbugs and chatterers who in the guise of “Statesmen” have been squandering the fortunes of Germany since the Revolution.

One of the worst evidences of decadence in Germany before the War was the universal half-heartedness that was displayed more and more in everything that was undertaken. It is always a result of a man’s uncer¬ tainty about a thing, and the pusillanimity arising from that and other causes. The system of education was the cause of this defect.

There were a great number of weak points in German education before the War. It was fashioned on a one¬ sided system with a view to mere knowledge and very little with a view to producing practical ability. Still less score was set on formation of character, very little on encouraging the joy of responsibility, and none at all on cultivation of will-power and decision. The result of this was not the strong man, but rather the pliable possessor of much knowledge — and that was

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what we Germans were universally considered to be before the War and for which we enjoyed consideration. The German was liked because he was a useful man, but owing to the weakness of his will-power he was little respected. There was a good reason for his dropping nationality and Fatherland more easily than almost any other nation. That fine proverb : “With one’s hat in one’s hand we can go all over the world”, describes it all.

This pliability became disastrous when it governed the form under which alone the Monarch might be approached. The form insisted on no answering back, but agreement with everything which His Majesty chose to ordain. And yet it was in that quarter that the dignity of a free man was most needed ; otherwise such subservience was bound one day to be the ruin of the Monarchy.

This is good enough for toadies by profession, but all proper men — and the best men in the State still are that — will only feel repulsion when such nonsense is defended. For them history is history and truth is truth, even when a Monarch is concerned. No, the happiness of possessing a great man and a great Monarch combined is so seldom the lot of nations that they have to be content if cruel destiny at least spares them a terrible misfit.

Thus the virtue and significance of the monarchical idea cannot rest essentially in the person of the Monarch, unless Heaven deigns to set the crown on the brow of a brilliant hero such as Frederick the Great, or a wise character such as William I. This may happen once in several centuries — hardly oftener. Otherwise the con¬ ception takes precedence of the person, and its signi¬ ficance has to rest exclusively and intrinsically on the institution, and the Monarch himself enters the circle of those who serve it.

One result of wrong-headed education was fear of

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MY STRUGGLE

shouldering responsibility and the consequent weak¬ ness in the handling of essential problems.

I will pick a few cases out of the mass of instances which occur to me.

In journalist circles it is customary to describe the Press as a “Great Power” within the State. It is true that its importance is actually immense. It is hardly possible to over-estimate it — what it does is really to continue education up to an advanced age.

It is an essential interest of State and nation to see that the people do not fall into the hands of bad, ignorant, or indeed ill-disposed teachers. It is the State’s duty, therefore, to watch over the people’s education and prevent its taking a wrong direction, and it should keep an eye on what the Press, in particular, is doing, for its influence on men is by far the strongest and most penetrating of all, since its action is not transitory but continuous. Its immense importance lies in the uniform and persistent repetition of its teaching. Here, if anywhere, it is the State’s duty not to forget that, whatever it does, must be directed at one aim, and one alone ; it must not be led astray by the will o’ the wisp of so-called “freedom of the Press”, or be persuaded into neglecting its duties and withholding the nourishment, which the nation needs to keep it healthy. It must keep control of that instrument of popular education with absolute determination and place it at the service of the State and the nation.

What the so-called Liberal Press did before the War was to dig a grave for the German nation and the German Reich. We need say nothing about the lying Marxist papers ; to them lying is as much a necessary of life as mewing is to a cat. Their sole object is to break the national and popular powers of resistance, to prepare them for the slavery of inter¬ national capital and of their masters, the Jews.

What did the State do to counteract this wholesale poisoning of the nation ? Nothing, absolutely nothing !

MY STRUGGLE

1 1 1

A few feeble warnings, a few fines for offences too egregious to be overlooked, and that was all.

The defence put up by Government in those days against the Press — controlled mainly by Jews — which was slowly corrupting the nation, followed no definite line nor had it determination ; but worse than all it had no fixed objective. The intelligence of the officials entirely missed the point, both in estimating the import¬ ance of the struggle, choice of methods and settlement of a definite plan. They tinkered with it ; now and then, if too sorely bitten, they scotched some jour¬ nalistic viper for a few weeks, or even months, but they always let the nest of snakes continue in peace as before.

For imperfectly educated, superficial readers the Frankfurter Zeitung is the essence of respectability. It never uses rough expressions, deprecates brute force and always writes in favour of fighting with “intellectual” weapons, and this appeals curiously enough to the least intellectual people.

But it is just for our semi-intellectual classes that the Jew writes in his so-called “Intelligenzia Press”. The tone of Frankfurter Ze^unS and Berliner Tageblatt is intended to appeal to them, and it is they who are influenced by those papers. Whilst they most carefully avoid all coarseness of language, they use other vessels for pouring the poison into the hearts of their readers. In a medley of charming expression they lull their readers into believing that pure knowledge and moral truth are the driving force of their actions, whereas really it is a cunning contrivance for stealing a weapon which their opponents might use against the Press.

Readiness to be content with half-measures is the outward sign of inward decadence, and a national collapse is sure to follow sooner or later.

I believe that our present generation, if rightly led,

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MY STRUGGLE

will more easily master this danger. It has had certain experiences calculated to stiffen the nerves of anyone who has not completely missed the meaning of them. Certain it is that some time or other the Jew will cry out loudly in his newspapers, once a hand is laid on his beloved nest by putting an end to the disgraceful use of the Press, and once that instrument for education is brought into the service of the State and is no longer left in the hands of aliens and enemies of the nation I believe that it will be less of a burden to us younger ones than it was to our fathers. A thirty-centimeter grenade always hisses louder than a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers — so let them hiss !

The whole of education should be designed so as to occupy a boy’s free time in profitable cultivation of his body. He has no right during those years to loaf about idly and make disturbances in the streets and picture houses, but after his day’s work is done he ought to harden his young body, so that life may not find him soft when he enters it. To prepare for this and to carry it out is the function of youthful education, and not merely to pump in so-called knowledge. It must rid itself of the notion that management of the body is the business of the individual alone. No one should be free to sin at the expense of posterity, that is, of the race.

The fight against the poisoning of the soul must be waged in company with cultivation of the body. To-day all our life in public is like a forcing-bed for sexual ideas and attractions. Look at the bill of fare offered by the cinemas, playhouses and variety theatres, and you can hardly deny that this is not the right food, especially for the young. Hoardings and advertisement kiosks unite in drawing the public’s attention in the vulgarest ways. Anyone who has not lost the capacity for entering into the souls of the young will realize that it must lead to their very grave injury.

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The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our modern eroticism, as it must be from unmanly and prudish refusal to face facts. In all these things the aim and the method must be governed by the thought of preserving our nation’s health both in body and soul. The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the duty of maintaining the race.

Similar unhealthiness was observable in almost every domain of art and Kultur. It was a sad sign of our internal decadence that it was impossible to let young people visit most of the so-called “homes of art” (Kunststatte) , considering what was shamelessly exposed to public view with the warning — universal in the Panoptica — “For adults only”.

To think that such precautionary measures should be necessary in the very places which ought to be first to provide material for forming the youth, not for amusing their blase elders ! What would the great dramatists of all times have said to such a warning and to the cause which made it necessary ? Imagine the indignation of Schiller — how Goethe would have turned from it in fury !

But, indeed, what are Schiller, Goethe or Shake¬ speare in comparison with the heroes of the new G erman poetry ? Worn out and obsolete, altogether passe. For it is characteristic of the period not only that they produce nothing but filth, but that, in addition, they throw mud at all that was really great in the past.

Thus the saddest side of the condition of our national Kultur in the period before the War was not merely the complete impotence of our creative power in art and general culture, but also the spirit of hatred in which the memories of the greater past were besmirched and blotted out. In almost every domain of art, particularly in the drama and literature, all round the turn of the century, they produced less and less any new thing of

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MY STRUGGLE

1 14

importance, whilst they disparaged the best age and called it inferior and obsolete ; as if this present epoch could ever conquer any part of its shameful inferiority.

A study of religious conditions before the War will show how everything got into a state of disintegration. Even in this domain large sections of the nation had entirely lost all solid and comprehensive conviction. In this those who were openly and officially at variance with the Church played a smaller part than those who were merely indifferent. Both creeds maintain missions in Asia and Africa for the purpose of attracting fresh adherents to their doctrines — an aspiration which can show but very moderate results in comparison with the progress made by the Mohammedan faith— whereas in Europe they are continually losing millions and millions of genuine adherents, who either are entirely estranged from the religious life or simply go their own way. The consequences, from the point of view of morals, are far from good.

There are many signs of a struggle, every day increasing in violence, against the dogmatic principles of the various Churches, without which, in practice, religious belief is inconceivable in this world of humanity. The general mass of a nation do not consist of philo¬ sophers ; faith for them is very largely the sole basis for a moral view of life. The various attempts to find substitutes have not proved so suitable or successful as to be obviously a good exchange for the former religious confessions. If religious doctrine and faith really get a grip on the mass of the people, the absolute authority of that faith is then the whole basis of its efficacy. What then ordinary custom is for the general life — and without it thousands of men of superior culture would, no doubt, live reasonably and successfully, but millions of others would not — the Law is for the State, and dogma is for ordinary religion. It, and it alone, can defeat the unsteady, perpetually controverted,

MY STRUGGLE

1 *5

intellectual conception and mould it into a form, without which faith could never exist. In the other event the conception of a metaphysical view of life — in other words, philosophic opinion — could never have grown out of it. The attack upon dogma is in itself, therefore, very like the struggle against the general legal principles of the State, and just as the latter would end in com¬ plete State anarchy, the former would end in hopeless religious nihilism.

A politician, however, must estimate the value of a religion, not so much in connection with the faults inherent in it, but in relation to the advantages of a substitute which may be manifestly better. But until some such substitute appears, only fools and criminals will destroy what is there on the spot.

The fact that many people in pre-war Germany felt a distaste for the religious life must be ascribed to the misuse made of Christianity by the so-called “ Christian” Party, and to the shamelessness of the attempt to identify the Catholic Faith with a political party.

This fatal aberration provided opportunities for a number of worthless members of Parliament, but it caused injury to the Church.

But it was the whole nation that had to bear the consequences, seeing that the results it brought about in slackening religious life fell during a period when everything was beginning to slacken and shift, and traditional principles of morals and behaviour were threatening to collapse.

These rifts and cracks in the fabric of our nation might have gone on without danger, so long as no special strain was put upon them, but they were bound to cause disaster, supposing a rush of great events con¬ verted the question of the nation’s internal solidarity into one of decisive importance.

In the domain of politics also an observant eye could

MY STRUGGLE

1 16

mark evils which, unless alterations and improvements were soon taken in hand, were bound to count as indications of the approaching decay of the Empire’s external and domestic policy.

There were plenty who watched these indications with anxiety and censured the lack of plan and thought in the policy of the Empire ; they knew its inner weak¬ ness and hollowness very well, but they were but mere outsiders in political life. Officialdom in the Govern¬ ment ignored the intuitions of a Houston Stewart Chamberlain with the same indifference as they do to-day. These people are too stupid to think out any¬ thing for themselves and too conceited to learn what is needed from others.

One of the thoughtless observations which one is apt to hear quoted to-day, is that the Parliamentary system “has been a failure since the Revolution”. This gives rise too easily to the assumption that it was any different before the Revolution. In reality, the only effect of that institution is, and can be, only a destruc¬ tive one, and this it was at a time when most people chose to wear blinkers, and saw nothing or chose to see nothing. For the fall of Germany was not a little due to that institution.

Whatever fell under the influence of Parliament was done by halves, however one looks at it.

The Empire’s policy of alliances was a weak half¬ measure. Though they wished to maintain peace, they could not help steering straight for war.

The Polish policy was a half-measure. They irritated the Poles without ever tackling the question seriously. The result was neither a victory for Germany nor con¬ ciliation of the Poles, whereas they made an enemy of Russia.

The solution of the question of Alsace-Lorraine was a half-measure. Instead of brutally, once and for all, knocking the French hydra on the head, allowing,

MY STRUGGLE

”7

however, equal rights to the Alsatians, they did neither. Moreover, they could do nothing. The chief betrayers of their country kept their places in the ranks of the great Parties — Wetterle, for instance, in the Centre Party.

Whilst Jewry, through its Marxist and Democratic Press, broadcasted lies about German “militarism” over the whole world and tried to injure Germany by every means in its power, the Marxist and Democratic Parties refused to consider any comprehensive measure for com¬ pleting the national forces of Germany.

The loss of the struggle for the freedom and inde¬ pendence of the German nation is the result of the peace-time half-heartedness and weakness in calling up the combined strength of the nation in defence of the Fatherland.

One evil effect of the Monarchical system was that it increasingly persuaded a very large section of the nation that, as a matter of course, government was from above, and that the individual had no need to trouble himself about it. As long as government was really good, or at least meant well, matters went satisfactorily. But, alas ! supposing a well-meaning old government was replaced by a fresh and less conscientious one ! Then passive obedience and childlike faith were the worst evil imaginable.

But against these and other weaknesses there were points of undoubted value.

First of all, stability in the State leadership secured by the monarchical form of State, and withdrawal of all places under the State from the turmoil of speculation by greedy politicians ; also the intrinsic dignity of the institution and the authority which this engendered ; elevation of the officials as a body and of the Army far above the obligations of Party politics. Then the advantages due to the personal embodiment of the headship of the State in the person of the Monarch, and

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MY STRUGGLE

the example of responsibility, which is laid upon the Monarch more heavily than on the chance of a parlia¬ mentary majority — the proverbial purity of German administration was ascribable to this first and foremost.

The Army taught certain ideals and self-sacrifice for the Fatherland and its greatness, whilst in other callings greed and materialism had taken fast hold. It taught national unity as against division into classes, and perhaps its only failing was the institution of one-year volunteers. This was a failing because it broke through the principle of absolute equality and separated the better educated from the general military community ; whereas the opposite would have been an advantage. Considering the exclusiveness of our upper classes and their increasing estrangement from their own people, the Army might have worked as a blessing if it avoided, at any rate, isolating the so-called intelligenzia within its