Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler

Chapter 3 Part 3

By Richard E. Noble

“… At that time I was a soldier and did not want to discuss politics. It really was not the time for it...”
This is an interesting point. Basically Adolf is saying that the time for discussing the morality or justification for a war is not when the war is going on. At this point it is too late. Any discussion should have taken place before the war began, I would presume. Once in a war, all must be united, and any who are not supportive must be considered traitors. I think that this attitude is more or less universal. The governments of all countries for the most part defend this attitude.
The problem with this attitude, as I see it, is that in the light of this universally accepted principle, governments who are prone to a war for whatever reason have a tendency to get the war underway as quickly as they can and with as little discussion as possible. This almost automatically turns any war protester or dissenter into an instant traitor.
In our present government here in the United States, we have almost done away with the notion of the Congress debating war and reserving the right to declare a war. We have replaced debate with a presidential or party initiative or declaration. This serves pretty much to remove discussion, and the rights of the people in a democratic society, by even silencing their minority of elected representatives who serve the ‘Republic’. Great idea for those that favor Adolf's point of view, but not so wonderful for those who consider peace a positive aspiration. And the question then evolves, if we don’t have a discussion prior to our involvement in a war, and it is unpatriotic to discuss ‘politics’ once a war has begun, when do we evaluate the moral, ethical and even practical considerations of the nation’s involvement? This is a problem. And as we see from the publishing date on the cover of Mein Kampf, not a new one.
“… I am still convinced today that even the most humble carter had done his fatherland more valuable service than the first, let us say ‘parliamentarian.’ I never hated those prattlers more than just at that time, when every regular fellow who had to say something shouted it into the enemies face, or more appropriately, left his mouth at home and silently did his duty in some place. Yes in those days I hated all those ‘politicians’, and if I had had anything to say, a parliamentarian spade battalion would have been formed at once; then they would have been able to babble among themselves to their hearts content if they had to, and they would not have been able to annoy or even to harm the decent and honest part of mankind …”
The decent and honest part of mankind is, of course, those who are thoughtlessly and wordlessly obeying the dictates of ‘Duty’. But, that does not include that decent and honest part of mankind on the other side of the battle lines who are thoughtlessly and wordlessly obeying the dictates of their country to an opposite ‘duty’.
Here we find Adolf once again taking up the part of the ‘regular fellow’. The world could only have hoped that Adolf would have taken his own words in that last paragraph to heart - because if he would have become a silent, and decent regular fellow instead of joining the ranks of the prattling politicians, the world might have avoided its second worst catastrophe in the same century.
Although from the information that we have today, that would probably not have been the case anyway. The German Armament industries, and the disgraced German military elite, were bent on retribution, and if Adolf hadn’t happened along, they certainly would have fronted another, or any other who may have had the support of a majority of the citizens.
“...There were two things which in those days annoyed me, and which I considered detrimental ... Soon after the news of the first victories, a certain press began slowly, and at first perhaps unrecognizably to many to pour drops of wormwood into the general enthusiasm.”
This criticism of the press is another constant theme throughout the book. Adolf hated the press, but then pretty much became a journalist himself. He owned his own newspaper, and eventually took over all the media of Germany. As is obvious Adolf did not like competition to his opinion. There will be more on this subject to come, but in the next few pages we really get into some of Adolf founding principles or political and psychological philosophy.
“… Marxism, the ultimate aim of which was and will always be the destruction of all non-Jewish national States, to its dismay saw during July, 1914, the German working class, which it had ensnared, awake to enlist in the service of the country more and more quickly from hour to hour. In a few days the whole show of this infamous deception of the nation had frittered away, and the Jewish rabble leaders stood there lonely and abandoned, as though not a trace of the idiocy and lunacy which it had infiltrated into the masses for sixty years remained. It was a bad moment for the deceiver’s of the German nation’s working class. But immediately the leaders recognized the danger which threatened them, they at once pulled the magic cap of lies over their ears and impudently joined in aping the national rising ... In August of the year 1914, the Jewish haggling of international solidarity had disappeared at one stroke from the heads of the German working class, and instead, after a few weeks, American shrapnel began to pour down the blessings of fraternity on the helmets of the marching columns. It was the duty of a prudent government, now that the German laborer had found his way back to his nationality, to root out without pity the instigators against this nationality. If the best were killed on the front, then one could at least destroy the vermin at home.”
This excerpt is loaded with history and speculation. The first comment I have, though certainly not the most important, is with regards to ‘American shrapnel’. This may be naive on my part but America did not enter the war until 1917, why the reference to American shrapnel weeks after the War began? There is no footnote referencing the statement. I can only assume that Adolf felt that America was aiding his enemies from the very beginnings of the war. This may be true, but I simply don’t have that information in my body of reading on that war. Supposedly, Woodrow Wilson was “keeping us out of war”. Then again DuPont gun powder was supplying anybody and everybody, but Adolf says “shrapnel” – that implies bombs. Were we supplying the allies bombs as early as 1914? It seems that we were.
Adolf is here elated that the war had put an end to the internal conflict that was dividing his nation for the sixty years prior to the outbreak of the war. If there was ever a period in history where governments can be accused of precipitating a War for the purposes of promoting internal security, World War One may be the perfect starting point for an investigation.
Adolf is obviously making reference to the International Workers of the World movement, and possibly the socialist union organization of the same name. The International Workers of the World was a Socialist inspired labor organization that was nick-named ‘The Wobblies’. The Wobblies were a radical left wing group that encouraged the violent overthrow of existing Capitalists dominated Governments, on behalf of the non-ethnic, non-nationalist workers of the world. Rough and tumble, one eyed, Big Bill Hayward was a famous spokesman for this group in the United States. Their entire leadership was imprisoned for anti-American, anti-war instigation before and during, and after World War one.
The entire Socialist movement was given its impetus and philosophical foundation by, as far as I know, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in their ‘Origins of the Family’ and ‘The Communist Manifesto’. In these writings they establish, or try to establish, an intellectual and scientific foundation for an antithesis to the established evolution of private property, the economic principles of supply and demand, industrial efficiency, and the Capitalistic principle that to the inventive and the entrepreneur belong the spoils. Basically in this philosophy, the problems of the world were laid at the feet of the world industrialists.
There was enough truth in their accusations and discontent in the world system at that time to initiate a worldwide movement with the fall of the rich industrialists as a number one tenet of their program for the future. The individual entrepreneurship of the international industrialist would eventually be replaced by a Democratic uprising of the workers of the world. We all think that this involved a Democratic-Socialist Government evolution, but, if I am not mistaken the actual prediction was that once the workers took over the industries of the world, all necessity for governments would dissolve.
At this time there was also the rise of a group known as anarchist. These people were the true Republicans of their day. They not only believed that the government that governs least governs best, but that no government at all was better than any government. They believed that governments were the root of all evil, and should be done away with.
This whole period brings me back to the American Revolution and Tom Paine’s writings. Tom Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ makes a similar point. He attributes all the wars of mankind to the system of inherited power, and the world system, at that time, of rule by ‘Kings’. His basic conclusion is that if there were no Kings, and consequently no rivalries between Royal Families, there would be no such thing as War. He accuses Kings of encouraging War for the purposes of solidifying their rule. He concludes his book with an economic breakdown of what could be done for the people of the world if Kings, and consequently wars, were eliminated. I remember reading Tom Paine, someone whom I admire, and actually laughing at the naiveté of his conclusions. For a man as brilliant as he to conclude that all of the ugliness of human nature was only attributed to members of the Royal families of the world, is to me lacking extremely in human insight. By the same token, at this period in history, for Karl Marx & company to come to the conclusion that the workers of the world could unite and take over the industries of the world and operate them peacefully, and non-competitively for the overall benefit of mankind in general is surely equally lacking in insight into basic human nature. To say that there will ever be a time in the future history of the human race that the human condition will not necessitate some form of government or cooperation among human beings, sounds like real “Tom Foolery” to me.
Adolf clearly looks at this Workers of the World movement as contrary to nationalism and nation-hood. And there is no doubt that he looks to Karl Marx as the Jew that is attempting through his philosophy to destroy ‘nation-hood’ throughout the world.
I wonder at this point where Adolf got this idea of a Jew inspired world conspiracy. I know that Henry Ford was a player in the establishment of this particular conspiracy theory. I don’t know if he was the founder of this notion. I can understand how Henry may have come up with this notion, and possibly even why.
Henry was, of course, one of the new industrialist ‘kings’ who were manipulating the lives of the workers of the world in the negative exploitative manner as described by Karl Marx in his writings. As Tom Paine had turned the world against Kings and their Kingdoms, so had Karl Marx turned the world against the New Industrialist ruler ‘Kings’ of the world. The industrialist Kings of the new industrially ruled world were placed on the historical hot seat. They were now the demon and the cause of all of humankind’s failures. You don’t have to be too insightful as to imagine how Henry Ford might have felt. There were riots outside of his factories, and the world at large was now questioning anyone’s right to be super wealthy.
Karl Marx basically stated that in the natural evolution of the economic world people like Henry Ford would be done away with. I am sure that this did not make Henry very happy. His life, the life of his wife, his children, and grandchildren were being directly threatened by the spread of this hostile philosophy. And who was it that was pointing this gun of destruction at his head and at the head of his loved ones… Karl Marx... a Jew.
Technically Karl Marx wasn’t a Jew. His parents had changed his religious affiliation in order to avoid his being denied education in a time of anti-Jewish sentiment in their place of residence at the time. But as far as the world was and is concerned Karl was and is a Jew. One can only speculate as to why Frederick Engels was not given more credit in the establishment of this anti-industrialist notion, and to what might have happened to this Jewish conspiracy notion if a man by the name of Shaun Mahoney, or Mohamed Abdula had thought up and publicized the industrialist internationalist conspiracy theory.
The big question to me is how and why did the ‘Jew’ inspire such a profound hatred in Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford and others. This question also leads me to an investigation of the historical hatred of the Jew. At the risk of sounding naive here, I just don’t get it. I intend to research this subject. I can understand Henry Ford hating Karl Marx for instigating the workers of the world against him and others like him. I can understand Adolf in this same regard, but to project all of this anger caused by the intellectualizing of one man onto an entire religious and ethnic group, seems to me like campaigning to rid the world of Postmen because your great grandparents were once persecuted by a Nazi soldier. The connection being that both the Nazi soldier and the American postman both wear uniforms and both work for a government. Again, I need to do research on the Historical influence and prejudice against the Jew to get some kind of an insight into all of this vicious and boundless hatred.
Adolf’s last sentence in the quote above is also thought provoking. If his nation could commit him and his comrades to death on the battlefield, certainly it would be no greater disgrace to national justice to rid the nation of those of his fellow citizens who did not support the cause for which he and his comrades had fought - which was in Adolf’s mind the preservation of his nation-hood and his ‘kind’.
It certainly isn’t hard for Adolf to rationalize killing; killing of his own countrymen, killing of Jews, killing of Slavs, Frenchmen, Englishman, Gypsies, the disloyal, the unpatriotic, the pacifist, the sick, the weak, the defective, the mentally impaired ... almost anybody and anything. It seems quite obvious that Adolf enjoyed killing. World War One had turned Adolf into a killer. It seems that he loved the experience of it all. He claims his bravery, courage, and manhood from the experience. Adolf learned a taste for blood, and found no problem in wallowing in the murder and destruction of it all. In this regard, I would have to say that he was a madman, but then immediately my mind turns to Sherman, Patton, MacArthur, and the whole Military tradition of the human race. Is the enemy here Adolf, or a way of thinking, a philosophy?
Now the question occurs to Adolf of how to rid one’s country of the opposition, permanently. He looks at this point even more theoretically, and discusses how to rid, or defuse an idea, a religion, and a movement. The practical side of his inquiry is now that World War one has begun what do we do with the dissenter - especially the Marxist, and their labor supporters.
“...But what was to be done now? To put the leaders of the whole movement behind lock and bar, to put them on trial and deliver the nation of them...”
This is what President Wilson did in the United States to the Wobblies, and other left wing radicals who tried to incite laborers against the war.
“… To apply ruthlessly the entire military means in order to root out this pestilence. The parties had to be dissolved, the Reichstag, if necessary, to be brought to reason at the point of the bayonet, but better still to adjourn it immediately. Just as today the Republic is allowed to dissolve parties, one would have had more reason to apply similar means in those days. The existence or non-existence of an entire nation was at stake! But then, of course, a question arose; can spiritual ideas be extinguished by the sword? Can one fight ‘views of life’ by applying brute force?”
This last question almost seems a joke coming from Adolf, but he has some practical considerations. He doesn’t want to turn his enemies into a group of fanatical martyrs. His question is how to end an opposition once and for ever.
“... the following fundamental realization is the result; Conceptions and ideas, as well as movements with a certain spiritual foundation, may these be right or wrong, can be broken at a certain point of their development with technical means of power only if these physical weapons are at the same time the supporters of a new kindling thought, an idea, or view of life. Use of force alone, without the driving forces of a spiritual basic idea as presupposition, can never lead to the destruction of an idea and its spreading, except in the form of a thorough eradication of even the last representative and the destruction of the last tradition.”
So, let’s say that we feel that the fanatical belief in Christianity or Islam is against the proper advancement of our nation, how would we go about stamping it out?
Right here in these few pages we are given Adolf basic political philosophy. First, says Adolf, it would do us no good to use force alone against Christians or Muslims in our nation, because this would only strengthen their resolve, force them to go underground, and entrench them in their incorrect mystical fanatical, religious misconceptions. First, what we have to do is supplant, or oppose their belief, or faith, with a belief or faith of greater appeal, and couple this with our forceful rejection of its supporters. If we choose to use force alone to stamp out this plague of Christians that is corrupting our nation, we can only be successful if we kill every last one, and destroy completely all of their traditions.
And there we have it, Adolf’s political strategy for his Marxist opponents, and the seed of his future strategy for the Jewish Problem in Germany. It seems that Uncle Joe Stalin must have read Adolf’s book also, for as we know today he was a stern advocate of these policies in his own country. But isn’t this really the instinctive philosophy of any Authoritarian, or Militarily minded individual? Doesn’t every bully feel this to be the proper way to convince the cowards around him to line up behind him?
So let’s repeat: In order to suppress an established faith or belief, Aldolf suggests that we should suppress it with force and kill its adherents, while also establishing a more acceptable faith or philosophic dogma within the hearts of the faithful. Adolf was suppressing the “faith” of Marxism with the dogma of Nazism.
This is exactly what the Spanish Conquistadors did in Central and South America and what the British and the Colonist did with regards to the Indians in North America. And, I suppose this is exactly what Alexander the Great, along with Julius Caesar, Constantine, Charlemagne and other conquerors and authoritarian dictators throughout ancient and modern history. This is nothing new; simply a reaffirmation of the old, tried and true. Once again we see Adolf Hitler’s conservative tendencies.
But if this is the wrong method for dealing with the opposition, what is the right method? I believe, along with Adolf, that the only way to defeat an idea is with a better idea. But my belief gets more serious than this. I believe that the only way to suppress an incorrect notion or idea is by presenting or confronting it with its correct alternative. I believe in the open and uninhibited transmission of opposing viewpoints. Hopefully in this exchange the people will chose the correct alternative.
But what if they don’t? What if I know that my way is the correct way, but I am not versed well enough in the art of persuasion to convince others to follow my correct notions?
This was obviously the case in Adolf’s Nazi Germany for a good many people. Well then one can do as Albert Einstein did and renounce one’s citizenship to his homeland, escape to a more compatible foreign land, and continue preaching the Gospel of your own personal truth. Or do as Mark Twain did during the American Civil War and escape to some new wide open spaces, in his case the semi-lawless West, and simply ignore the insane antics of your fellowman.
But what if there is no other land? What if you are the only one who knows the truth and no one will accept it?
First you can reconsider your own position under the premise that it would be very unlikely that the whole world could be wrong and you alone right.
But what if you are still convinced of your personal righteousness, even with the opposition of the whole world? Well, you can keep your opinions to yourself, and maybe record a diary or history of the incorrect events going on in the world about you (Josephus, Homer, Herodotus etc.) or you can scream your beliefs from the rooftops, until a Swat teams eventually stifles you forever.
But what if you chose to be a silent observer but are demanded to participate in the insanity of the deranged majority that surrounds you?
This must have been the sad situation of many a poor soul inside Nazi Germany during Hitler’s reign of horror. What if you are asked to plunge the knife into the heart of the Jew? What if you are asked to slit the throats of the hated children? What if you are asked to drop into the shower room, the poison gas pellets that will kill hundreds of innocent people - people who are innocent from your point of view only? By the rest of your society's standards they are vermin. What if you are told that either you kill them or we will kill you? What if this disagreement stems to members of your own family, and you are asked to kill even your brothers and sisters, or your mother and father, or your uncles and aunts? What do you do then?
Well, there are not too many alternatives to this scenario. You either kill others unjustly and against the dictates of your own conscience, or you stand up to your own people and country and take the consequences as dictated by the laws of those about you. You take their hate, their ridicule, and even their torture, persecution and imprisonment. An extension of this notion is the belief of the pacifist who defines all humanity as a family member, and will give up his own life before relinquishing his love for his fellowman.
Many throughout History have been forced to make this type decision - to Name a few; Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King. Many other political dissidents chose incarceration as opposed to revolution or violent aggression towards their own countrymen. This choice in time of war is invariably a thankless one.
Last but not least, you can become a revolutionary, and kill your own misguided neighbors because of their lack of intellectual insight. This alternative has always seemed self-defeating to me. Self-defeating to one’s own spirit and soul, and self-defeating to the cause that you may be championing. Not to mention the morality of killing your own loved ones and fellow countrymen.
But now back to Adolf, and the philosophy of despotism.
“... Thus, summing up one can say the following: Every attempt at fighting a view of life by means of force will finally fail, unless the fight against it represents the form of an attack for the sake of a new spiritual direction. Only in the struggle of two views of life with each other can the weapon of brute force, used continuously and ruthlessly, bring about the decision in favor of the side it supports. It was on this account that the fight against Marxism had failed so far. This was also the reason why Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws finally failed and were bound to fail, despite all efforts. The platform of a new view of life was lacking for the rise of which the fight could have been fought ...”
And this is exactly what Adolf proceeded to do. He fought the notion of peace with the militarist glory of war. He fought fear of death with the inevitable notion of the Social Darwinist that death is for the weak and sickly. He preached immortality through the preservation of the race and nation to which he belonged; Your death is of little significance when put aside the advancement of ‘your kind’. He challenged Democracy with the practicality and efficiency of Dictatorship. He challenged the principle of kindness and charity with the obvious unkindness and lack of charity provided by the everyday example of the All Mighty and exhibited through the vision of His pitiless disciple, Mother Nature. He combated Socialism with Elitism, and appeals to the glory of the individual. He combated the growing spirit of internationalism, with the more personal and less humanitarian notion of nationalism and patriotism. He likened debate and thoughtful argumentation to a lack of resolve and an inability to make a decision and thus a lack of leadership. For every thesis out there in the world about him, he provided an antithesis. He provided the practicality of Hegel with the fanaticism of Nietzsche.
Without doubt, Adolf was the spokesman for a Faith. The preacher and the defender of the principles of the Barbarian, the War Lord, the defender of the sword; a preacher for the righteousness and glory of destruction; the gallant, fearless, defender of the dominant, the unsympathetic, and the right of might; a true defender of the principle of selfishness, and cruelty, all for the sake of the survival of ‘culture’ and the true chosen people. The modern day Ayn Rand political ideals are a spin-off from Hitlerism.
So Adolf provided along with terrorists tactics, a new Faith, a new Religion, a new philosophy - the principles of this new Religion being Race, Country, Might.
“...Thus the Iron Chancellor, by handing over the responsibility of his fight against Marxism to the benevolence of the bourgeois democracy, set the wolf to mind the sheep.”
Adolf obviously saw little difference between Democracy and Marxism. And why should he? Marxism claimed to be the philosophy of the common man. Marxism predicted the eventual overthrow of all government by a basic and logical ‘evolution’ of the people. Marxism preached a true government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Isn’t this the basic philosophy of democratic rule? Isn’t this the eventual goal of all democratic states?
Marx believed in the eventual triumph of morality and economic justice on the behalf of the majority of the people, over the immorality of the prevailing philosophy of the Survival of the ‘best’, and the advancement of the ‘richest’. Marx was a ‘Leveler’. Marx predicted that the ‘fittest’ would be overcome by the growing masses of the less fit. Hitler provided the antithesis to everything that Marx and his followers preached. Democracy would not prevail. True leaders would emerge, as they always have, and lead their tribe to their manifest destiny. Government and leadership by the many is laughable. Leaders are not elected but born. Genius is not learned, but innate. The All Mighty has set up the system, and the guardian and enforcer of the All Mighty’s system is Mother Nature who also operates through the natural and undeniable system of the evolution of the survival of the fittest.
It is interesting. The true philosophical winner here is Darwin. Both Karl and Adolf are advocates of evolution, and yet I am sure that Darwin would not support either social interpretation of his theoretical observations. Today most scientists agree that the ‘evolution’ of our planet and the animals that inhabit it are products of this process. But how the process actually works no one quite knows. Have animals evolved into new species through interbreeding and genetic adapting or cosmic mutations, or both? And of course, there are those who claim that only ‘God’ can truly mutate anything.
Albert Einstein had a similar problem with his relativity theory. His specific observation grounded in scientific technique and mathematical theory was then expanded by the unscientific into theories of social interaction of and on which they had no bearing, and no particular relevance. Both Karl and Adolf took Darwin into unrelated territory. I have the feeling that if Charles Darwin found himself locked in a barroom with both of these guys, he would have, out of total frustration, drank himself into unconsciousness.
“... The ‘bourgeois’ parties, as they call themselves, will never be able to draw the ‘proletarian’ masses into their camp, as here two worlds face each other, separated partly naturally, partly artificially, and their attitude towards each other can only be a fighting one. But here the younger one will succeed - and this would be Marxism.”
Adolf ends this chapter equating Social Democrats as Marxist supporters, Democracy as Marxism, and the total inability of any current German political party to challenge the Marxist Doctrine.
“… I was of this opinion long before the war, and therefore I could not make up my mind to join one of the existing parties. This opinion was enhanced in the course of the events of the World War by the obvious impossibility of fighting ruthlessly against Social Democracy because of the absence of a movement which had to be more than a parliamentary party.”
It is interesting to note here that Albert Einstein stated that in his opinion the best form of Government would be a Socialist Democratic State, and that he considered himself to be a Socialist Democrat.
In our society we rarely hear the word ‘Socialist’ mentioned in any positive light, or interpretation. You are either a Socialist, or a Democrat. Certainly you can’t be both, even though ‘Socialist’ and ‘Democrat’ are more in tune and in cooperation, philosophically or theoretically than ‘Capitalist’ and ‘democrat’. I’ve never heard anyone say that they are a Capitalistic Democrat. The winner-take-all Capitalist ‘elitist’ philosophy, does not jive with the cooperative, majority rule notions of the democrat. Actually Adolf was more consistent, philosophically, than we are in this regard. This bridge between Capitalism on the one hand and Democracy on the other is much of the cause of our political party disputes. It is truly challenging to aspire to become a ‘Democratic Capitalist’. It is kind of like claiming to be a rightist-leftist or leftist-rightist, but really this is what most of us here in the United States are. And most often our personal confusion is a result of trying to create a balance in our own mind between these two contrary philosophies.

[This is a part of a continuing series on this blog. This is my 9th entry.
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