Mein Kampf Chap. 7 Part 3

By Richard E. Noble

I have often heard it attributed to Adolf that if you tell a lie often enough and loud enough people will eventually come to believe it. I am yet to come across this or such a statement in this work, but this next paragraph is as close as I have come.
“...By stamping Ludendorif as the culprit of the loss of the World War, one took away from the hand of the only dangerous accuser, who was able to stand up against the traitors to the fatherland, the weapon of moral right. Therewith one started out with the very correct assumption that in the size of the lie there is always a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of a people may be more corrupt in the bottom of their hearts than they will be consciously and intentionally bad, therefore with the primitive simplicity of their minds they will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also lie sometimes in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed of too great lies. Thus such an untruth will not at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe in the possibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion in others; indeed they may doubt and hesitate even when being enlightened, and they accept any cause at least as nevertheless being true; therefore, just for this reason some part of the most impudent lie will remain and stick; a fact which all great lying artists and societies of this world know only too well and therefore also villainously employ.
“Those who know best this truth about the possibilities of the application of untruth and defamation, however, were at all times the Jews ... the great masters of lying ... He who does not realize this or does not want to believe this will never be able to help truth to victory in this world…”
There is a lot to be considered in this statement. First; ‘that the great masses of people may be more corrupt in the bottom of their hearts than they will be consciously and intentionally bad’.
What in the world does that mean?
I can only interpret this to mean that Adolf thinks that people ‘deep down’ are much worse than they appear to be or think they are.
I feel just the opposite. I feel that people at heart are much better than the circumstances of their lives usually allow them to become. But Adolf is an elitist at heart, and looks at the ‘common people’ as stupid and as his enemy.
I feel more like Tom Paine. Whenever I see the words ‘common people’, or ‘masses’, I see myself standing in the center of the crowd and I feel that they are talking about me and my family and friends. Adolf and all those who think themselves above me, I consider potential enemies.
Next, he talks of ‘the primitive simplicity of their minds’. If you find yourself agreeing with the basic feelings or passages such as this, then you are a potential elitist. If these passages raise your ire, and the hairs on the back of your neck, then you are a what?
I guess that we would be called Populists. How Adolf got the support of the common German is beyond me. I can only conclude that elitism must have been a part of the heritage of the German Nation as a whole. Though I must admit that the tendency to believe ourselves to be better than ‘the common crowd’ is a widespread trait, even among the lowest of us on the social strata, and in some way or another it is a part of all of us.
Some of us try to suppress this tendency, and others relish and thrive on just the thought of it. It could be that each of us is all possibilities, initially, and by training and encouragement can be turned to the one direction or the other.
It is clear to me that the circumstances of my life have led me to be well aware of who I am, where I come from, and what my roots are. I may think in my heart that I am ‘better’ than the common crowd, but the circumstances of my life have made it very clear to me that I am, and always will be a part of the common herd, whether I like it or not. I find myself pointing this out continually to members of the common herd around me, but not without great resistance. So maybe Adolf was tapping into a more ‘common’ quality than I would have believed.
Next, he says that the ‘common herd’ in their ‘simplistic’ ignorance is more capable of believing a big lie as opposed to a small one, because they themselves are capable of telling small lies but would never or are afraid to tell large ones.
I think Adolf is babbling at the brain here. He is trying to defend his idol, General Ludendorff from all the anti-war criticism that is now being venged against him. As usual he dismisses anything that opposes his line of thinking as psychotic lunacy. He is basically saying that Ludendorif was a great leader and General, World War I was a great and righteous cause, and all of us who fought in that war were courageous and brave soldiers, and anyone who says the contrary is a lying, cowardly, traitor, and if he would dare say that to my face, I will pull his tongue out.
When you consider that nearly every young man in that country was a soldier in that losing war effort it is easy to see where he got his support.
His notion that people have a tendency to believe a big lie because they figure that anyone who would have the nerve and daring to say such a thing must have some truth on his side, is pure dribble. We of the ‘common herd’ might be stupid Adolf, but we are not that stupid. Adolf has the Elitist disease, he thinks that everybody is stupid, and that he can out cleaver them.
I think that people as a whole are much more susceptible to the truth than to a lie. The problem is exposing the truth, and exposing it in an understandable way. This is what History, Philosophy, Science and learning are all about. People who are beleaguered and being put upon will believe anyone who appears on the scene who appears to be defending them or their position. But, I think they know only too well the truth, and when their leaders are exaggerating the facts. The ‘Jewish problem’ in Germany is quite another problem.
At the end of this statement Adolf gets back to the ‘Jews’ once again. After laying down his case in the above he then informs us that the “big” lie that he has been talking about has been placed upon Germany by the Jews. But what is that lie? He seems to know what it is and he presumes that his reading audience does also. The Jews are the masters of lying, he informs us. So the notion which began this chapter about repeating a lie over and over and eventually everyone will believe it - if intended in this case - is really a Jewish tactic; not something that Adolf is recommending or postulating as a part of his teachings. This whole concept is simply meant to be more Jew bashing. And we should all know by now that Adolf does not think of the Jews as an admirable group or “race” of people. So basically all Adolf is saying here is: The Jews are liars and they are big liars. So what’s new or profound in this thought from the mind of Adolf?
It would be interesting to contemplate the notion that there were no such things as Jews. In which case, who would be Adolf’s real enemies? With no Jews as scapegoats we have a host of enemies. The Marxists, of course; but Marxist were made up of a divergent group - laborers, workers, intellectuals, men, woman, pacifists, anti-wars veterans, internationalists, and last but not least his own German people. By identifying all of his enemies as ‘Jews’, he isolated all of the different categories of his enemies under one common heading. You are either a Jew traitor, or a Jew traitor lover.
I guess that Adolf was somewhat correct in his assumption that ‘people’ want simplistic answers to their problems. I would qualify this by saying that uneducated people might be more inclined to accept a simplistic and inaccurate answer, than a more complicated more accurate explanation. This would be understandable. Without the background and the information on any given subject, how can the information be processed? How can the truth be discerned? The solution to this tendency should be more education of the ‘people’.
If there were no ‘Jew’, then Adolf’s next culprit would have been the Marxist, or the Marxist philosophy. This philosophy has also been the common enemy of our nation, or at least the leaders of our nation. I think that my next analysis will be that of Karl Marx and his political and economic opinions. Why did this man’s ideas cause such uproar, and why are so many people hateful and fearful of his stated notions even today? The battle against Communism seems to be the underlying cause behind World War II.
Adolf basically supported the elitist capital industrialist, and in turn they supported him financially. It may have been a part of the underlying problem behind World War I - the rise of unionism and the basic revolutionary fervor of laborers throughout the world. [Is the real history of this last century simply the battle between the industrialists and their supporters, and the maligned laborers and their supporters, as in the previous century, it was the battle between the kings and their supporters and the ‘common people’? Would this then not be, more or less, the continuation of the same problem? And wouldn’t all of this be nothing more than the continual problem of the centuries; the battle between the have’s and the have not’s? The slaves against the rulers? And morally doesn’t this all boil down to the basics of selfishness and greed, as opposed to humanitarianism, and sharing? The roots of conflict always seem to be the same.] Communism was stated to be the problem behind the Korean War. And it was the claimed problem behind the Vietnam War. It is time to get to the root of this philosophy, at least for me.
Adolf’s accusation that it is the ‘culprits’ behind the loss of the war that are responsible for the collapse of Germany and not the loss of the war itself is illogical. The loss of the War and the reparations along with all of the other psychological and economic factors is plainly the cause of Germany’s post war problems. Who is actually to blame for that loss is an academic question, although a very personal one to those involved.
One side said that all of our problems have been caused by our warlike leaders and the war orientated government that they set up. If they had kept their mouths shut and never joined in this fray we would all have avoided this national collapse.
The other side said that there would have been no post war problems if we had won. Adolf’s point is that if we all kept unified and fighting together, instead of quitting and squabbling among ourselves we would have been victorious and our present collapsed state of affairs would be non existent.
Well, that may have been true. We will never know, but most historians seem to agree that this would not have been the case. Basically the commitment of the United States to the war in 1917 with its vast industrial might and potential, made a German victory, even with the collapse of Russia impossible.
But, Adolf was right in criticizing the antiwar protesters who promised that the conquerors would praise them for their part in resisting the war effort, and reward them for seeing the errors of their past and the errors of their war directed government, and that a ‘new’ and greater Germany would be born and arise from the rubble. This did not happen. The allies regarded their victory as their own, and felt that the internal collapse of the German homeland was a simple matter of fact of war in general. They felt no allegiance or alliance with the dissenters, and certainly weren’t about to reward any anti-capitalist Bolshevik, communists. This makes one wonder about General DeGaulle after World War II. Why was he considered a hero and a leader of the resistance to the Vichy Nazi government while the leaders of the resistance and opposition in World War I Germany were ignored? Could the word ‘Bolshevists’ with their labor oriented anti-capitalist position have anything to do with it?
Adolf was clearly a true believer in the philosophy that one would be better off dead, than red, or any other national color but his own, for that matter. Adolf understands the passion and commitment of his position, but does not recognize the same passion and commitment in his opponents. I am sure that most of us would be supportive of his emotion if it were for our country in the place of the German situation. In fact, at the time Winston Churchill and other great leaders, including the Pope praised Adolf for unrelenting patriotism and loyalty to his homeland. Adolf, as I suppose we all know was a super patriot and proud son of his fatherland. A German John Wayne, if you will.
“… It is not by accident that man became master of the plague more easily than that of tuberculosis. The one comes in terrible death waves scourging mankind, the other sneaks in slowly; the one leads to terrible fear, the other to gradual indifference. But the consequence was that man opposed the one with the whole ruthlessness of his energy, while he tries to check consumption with weak means. Thus he mastered the plague, while he in turn is mastered by tuberculosis.
“Exactly the same is the case with national bodies. If they do not appear in the form of a catastrophe man begins gradually to get used to them and finally he will perish by them....”
This is again typical of Adolf. Whatever he says sounds good to the ear initially, but under analysis it gets messy.
First of all one has to wonder if mankind ‘attacked’ the plague with any greater furor than it attacked tuberculosis. It seemed to me that the plague ‘attacked’ mankind, and if it were not for the scientific intensity of a few learned individuals it would never have been ‘conquered’. In truth it really wasn’t conquered; it was actually endemic for 350 years after it first arrived in Europe sometime in the 1300’s. It did most of the conquering for quite a long time. The case with tuberculosis was exactly the same as far as I know. So this notion of ‘man’ simply setting his mind to something and sweeping it away with the swat of his sword, or the wave of his magic wand is not very realistic, and is more ego-elitism, or ego-promorphism.
But, with regards to his final statement that something has to be a catastrophe before it seems to get addressed with any serious action does seem to be true. But then on the other hand acting before the demands of ‘necessity’ always brings to mind the old Chinese proverb about smacking the fly on ones forehand with a mallet.
But then again, we realize that Adolf is never actually saying, what he is saying. It doesn’t take a lot of insight to realize that Adolf is not talking here about any potential national disease epidemic, but is referring to the action that must be taken with regards to the “Jewish” influence in German society. So far Adolf has not spoken directly about exterminating the Jews in a bodily sense. He constantly talks of eradicating the nation of its infection or sickness, but he doesn’t outright say let’s take all the Jews and kill them. One could still interpret most of his accusations as an expulsion process, or deportation of some sort. Only when one becomes aware of the anti-Semitism that existed in Germany historically does one realize the true intended impact of Adolf’s outburst against the Jews. I am led at this point to find out more about historical anti-Semitism throughout the world, and not just in Germany.
In this next statement Adolf goes back to his philosophical roots.
“... By the rapid increase of the German people’s number before the War, the question of supplying the daily bread stepped into the foreground of all political and economic thought … As soon as one renounced gaining new territory and, instead, entangled oneself in the delusion of a world wide economic conquest, the end was bound to lead to an industrialization that was as limitless as it was detrimental.
“The first consequence of gravest importance was the weakening of the peasant class. In the same measure in which the latter class diminished, the mass of the proletariat of the great cities grew more and more, until finally the balance was lost entirely. Now the sharp contrast between poor and rich became really apparent ... Distress and frequent unemployment began to play their game with people and left discontent and embitterment as a memory behind them. The consequence of this seemed to be the political class split. Thus, with all economic prosperity, discontent nevertheless became greater and deeper, and it even went so far that the conviction, ‘it can no longer go on like this,’ became a general one, without forming or being able to form a definite idea of what should perhaps have come...”
Hum, sounds here like Adolf is becoming a Marxist - political class split? But as a practical man, he could not but challenge the obvious, unemployment, poverty and industrialization as a cause of this problem? Now he is even borrowing from Albert Einstein. But when the people in the streets are without homes to go to, and holding up empty hands for a crust of bread, this problem must be addressed if you have any kind of political purpose whatsoever.
“... In the measure in which business rose to become the determining master of the state, money became the god whom now everybody had to serve and had to worship...”
More Marxism or a simple fact of life? And is any of this any different from the situation today? Is money and the power that it brings with it not the god of today? And has it not been the god of all of human endeavor throughout history? Is the problem here with the quest for the money, or the poverty and divisions resulting from the quest? Is the answer a more even distribution? Too many people divided and depressed, unemployed and living in despair is an obvious breeding ground for discontent and possible revolution. And if you wanted to start a revolution would we not simply reverse the process. Cause unemployment, lower wages, increase the gap between the rich and the poor, diminish or eliminate the middle class? But why would those in control choose to do this?
I can only see stupidity or blind avarice and greed as the possible motivations. Possibly a class of super wealthy could evolve from this tactic, but where would they be safe? Where would they live? I think that the logical course for a society is to try and provide a reasonably satisfactory life for the greatest number possible, and that this is the best method for maintaining internal security. But, I am sure there are those who would call this idea ‘Socialism’.
Adolf’s idea of government included Socialism. He wanted the greatest good for the majority, the loyal majority, but as we already know he was more than willing to sacrifice the minority in this regard. But, although Adolf was a Socialist, he also supported the fundamentals of the Capitalist ideal of individualism, even to the point of elitism, and he was a very outspoken Communist hater. The Communist idea for settling the dispute between the rich and the poor seems to have been to kill off the rich and take what they have. The socialist idea seems to be a kind of blackmail scheme in which the government acts as a middleman. In the Socialist idea the government extracts payment from the wealthy and supposedly redistributes the wealth to the less successful. The Capitalist notion seems to be every man for himself and to hell with the ‘losers’. I don’t know about you but I think that we need some new ideas.