Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925)

In 1923, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was sentenced to five years in prison at Landsberg Castle for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by his National Socialist Party to overthrow the German Democratic national government. He was treated well in prison and received many guests as he strolled the castle grounds. When a friend suggested that he write his autobiography to pass the time, Hitler was skeptical; although a gifted orator, he had written very little. After Hitler’s fellow inmate, Rudolf Hess (1894–1987), agreed to transcribe it for him, however, Hitler dictated the book. Originally titled Four Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice, it was published in 1925 as My Struggle (Mein Kampf). In it, Hitler attributed most human achievements to the German race—he called it the “Aryan” race—and argued that it had a duty to dominate the planet. The Jews, conversely, were held responsible for what Hitler viewed as the world’s worst problems, including communism, modern art, pornography, prostitution, and Germany’s defeat in World War I.

From Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, translated by Ralph Manheim. Copyright © 1943, renewed 1971 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Nation and Race

It is idle to argue which race or races were the original representative of human culture and hence the real founders of all that we sum up under the word “humanity.” It is simpler to raise this question with regard to the present, and here an easy, clear answer results. All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word “man.” He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times, forever kindling anew that fire of knowledge which illumined the night of silent mysteries and thus caused man to climb the path of mastery over the other beings of this earth. . . .

The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is represented by the Jew. . . . Not through him does any progress of mankind occur, but in spite of him. . . .

He works systematically for revolutionization in a twofold sense: economic and political.

Around peoples who offer too violent a resistance to attack from within he weaves a net of enemies, thanks to his international influence, incites them to war, and finally, if necessary, plants the flag of revolution on the very battlefields.

In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his financial control.

In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the foundations of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.

Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, overthrows all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature.

Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as outmoded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen. . . .

Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy

Only an adequately large space on this earth assures a nation of freedom of existence. . . .

The National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area—viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics—between our historical past and the hopelessness of our present impotence. And in this it must remain aware that we, as guardians of the highest humanity on this earth, are bound by the highest obligation, and the more it strives to bring the German people to racial awareness so that, in addition to breeding dogs, horses, and cats, they will have mercy on their own blood, the more it will be able to meet this obligation.

. . . The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime. Quite aside from the fact that the Reich’s frontiers in 1914 were anything but logical. For in reality they were neither complete in the sense of embracing the people of German nationality, nor sensible with regard to geo-military expediency. They were not the result of a considered political action, but momentary frontiers in a political struggle that was by no means concluded; partly, in fact, they were the results of chance. . . .

. . . Moreover, the times have changed since the Congress of Vienna: Today it is not princes and princes’ mistresses who haggle and bargain over state borders; it is the inexorable Jew who struggles for his domination over the nations. No nation can remove this hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up in its strength can defy the international enslavement of peoples. Such a process is and remains a bloody one.

If, however, we harbor the conviction that the German future, regardless what happens, demands the supreme sacrifice, quite aside from all considerations of political expediency as such, we must set up an aim worthy of this sacrifice and fight for it. . . .

And I must sharply attack those folkish pen-pushers who claim to regard such an acquisition of soil as a “breach of sacred human rights” and attack it as such in their scribblings. One never knows who stands behind these fellows. But one thing is certain, that the confusion they can create is desirable and convenient to our national enemies. By such an attitude they help to weaken and destroy from within our people’s will for the only correct way of defending their vital needs. For no people on this earth possesses so much as a square yard of territory on the strength of a higher will or superior right. Just as Germany’s frontiers are fortuitous frontiers, momentary frontiers in the current political struggle of any period, so are the boundaries of other nations’ living space. And just as the shape of our earth’s surface can seem immutable as granite only to the thoughtless soft-head, but in reality only represents at each period an apparent pause in a continuous development, created by the mighty forces of Nature in a process of continuous growth, only to be transformed or destroyed tomorrow by greater forces, likewise the boundaries of living spaces in the life of nations.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS