Violence... The story so far

Adolf Hitler

Volume One - "A Reckoning"
Annotated but unabridged.

Now, it goes without saying, he can really make use of his position for his own advancement.

Finally he needs only to have himself baptized to possess himself of all the possibilities and rights of the natives of the country. Not seldom he concludes this deal to the joy of the churches over the son they have won and of Israel over the successful swindle.

(h) Within Jewry a change now begins to take place. Up till now they have been Jews; that is, they attach no importance to appearing to be something else, which they were unable to do, anyway, because of the very distinct racial characteristics on both sides. At the time of Frederick the Great it still entered no one's head to regard the Jew as anything else but a 'foreign' people, and Goethe was still horrified at the thought that in future marriage between Christians and Jews would no longer be forbidden by law. And Goethe, by God, was no reactionary, let alone a helot; what spoke out of him was only the voice of the blood and of reason. Thus--despite all the shameful actions of the courts--the people instinctively saw in the Jew a foreign element and took a corresponding attitude toward him.

But now all this was to change. In the course of more than a thousand years he has learned the language of the host people to such an extent that he now thinks he can venture in future to emphasize his Judaism less and place his 'Germanism' more in the foreground; for ridiculous, nay, insane, as it may seem at first, he nevertheless has the effrontery to turn 'Germanic,' in this case a 'German.' With this begins one of the most infamous deceptions that anyone could conceive of. Since of Germanism he possesses really nothing but the art of stammering its language--and in the most frightful way--but apart from this has never mixed with the Germans, his whole Germanism rests on the language alone. Race, however, does not lie in the language, but exclusively in the blood, which no one knows better than the Jew, who attaches very little importance to the preservation of his language, but all importance to keeping his blood pure. A man can change his language without any trouble--that is, he can use another language; but in his new language he will express the old ideas; his inner nature is not changed. [This implies people do not change, when in fact they do every day, if not in the mind of the highly structured Authoritarians.] This is best shown by the Jew who can speak a thousand languages and nevertheless remains a Jew. His traits of character have remained the same, whether two thousand years ago as a grain dealer in Ostia, speaking Roman, or whether as a flour profiteer of today, jabbering German with a Jewish accent. It is always the same Jew. That this obvious fact is not understood by a ministerial secretary or higher police official is also self-evident, for there is scarcely any creature with less instinct and intelligence running around in the world today than these servants of our present model state authority. [Hitler seems as envious as he is fearful of the Jews.]

The reason why the Jew decides suddenly to become a 'German' is obvious. He feels that the power of the princes is slowly tottering and therefore tries at an early time to get a platform beneath his feet. Furthermore, his financial domination of the whole economy has advanced so far that without possession of all 'civil' rights he can no longer support the gigantic edifice, or at any rate, no further increase of his influence is possible. And he desires both of these; for the higher he climbs, the more alluring his old goal that was once promised him rises from the veil of the past, and with feverish avidity his keenest minds see the dream of world domination tangibly approaching. And so his sole effort is directed toward obtaining full possession of 'civil' rights. [The great opportunist learned at the feet of Jewry, or his projection of same, which is altogether a different matter.]

This is the reason for his emancipation from the ghetto.

(i) So from the court Jew there gradually develops the people's Jew, which means, of course: the Jew remains as before in the entourage of the high lords; in fact, he tries to push his way even more into their circle; but at the same time another part of his race makes friends with the 'beloved people.' If we consider how greatly he has sinned against the masses in the course of the centuries, how he has squeezed and sucked their blood again and again; if furthermore, we consider how the people gradually learned to hate him for this, and ended up by regarding his existence as nothing but a punishment of Heaven for the other peoples, we can understand how hard this shift must be for the Jew. Yes, it is an arduous task suddenly to present himself to his flayed victims as a 'friend of mankind.'

First, therefore, he goes about making up to the people for his previous sins against them. [Sound familiar?] He begins his career as the 'benefactor' of mankind. Since his new benevolence has a practical foundation, he cannot very well adhere to the old Biblical recommendation, that the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth; no, whether he likes it or not, he must reconcile himself to letting as many people as possible know how deeply he feels the sufferings of the masses and all the sacrifices that he himself is making to combat them. With this 'modesty' which is inborn in him, he blares out his merits to the rest of the world until people really begin to believe in them. Anyone who does not believe in them is doing him a bitter injustice. In a short time he begins to twist things around to make it look as if all the injustice in the world had always been done to him and not the other way around. The very stupid believe this and then they just can't help but pity the poor 'unfortunate.'

In addition, it should be remarked here that the Jew, despite all his love of sacrifice, naturally never becomes personally impoverished. He knows how to manage; sometimes, indeed, his charity is really comparable to fertilizer, which is not strewn on the field for love of the field, but with a view to the farmer's own future benefit. In any case, everyone knows in a comparatively short time that the Jew has become a 'benefactor and friend of mankind.' What a strange transformation! [Many, maybe most, Jews lived in Ghettos. But facts can be irrelevant to the Authoritarian Personality.]

But what is more or less taken for granted in others arouse the greatest astonishment and in many distinct admiration for this very reason. So it happens that he gets much more credit for every such action than the rest of mankind, in whom it is taken for granted.

But even more: all at once the Jew also becomes liberal and begins to rave about the necessary progress of mankind.

Slowly he makes himself the spokesman of a new era.

Also, of course, he destroys more and more thoroughly the foundations of any economy that will really benefit the people. By way of stock shares he pushes his way into the circuit of national production which he turns into a purchasable or rather tradable object, thus robbing the enterprises of the foundations of a personal ownership. Between employer and employee there arises that inner estrangement which later leads to political class division.

[This is not unique to Jews. Authoritarian industrialists in any culture too often do just this.]

Finally, the Jewish influence on economic affairs grows with terrifying speed through the stock exchange. He becomes the owner, or at least the controller, of the national labor force.

To strengthen his political position he tries to tear down the racial and civil barriers which for a time continue to restrain him at every step. [What does this remind one of? Democrats tore away many racial barriers; Republicans are now eroding civil barriers to tyranny.] To this end he fights with all the tenacity innate in him for religious tolerance--and in Freemasonry, which has succumbed to him completely, he has an excellent instrument with which to fight for his aims and put them across. [Freemasons were the technicians of the day; without them society could not prosper.] The governing circles and the higher strata of the political and economic bourgeoisie are brought into his nets by the strings of Freemasonry, and never need to suspect what is happening.

[Freemasonry -- The first Grand Lodge of Freemasonry was founded in England in 1717. According to its critics:


[The first lodge was active in banking circles, and their alliance with the Rothschild family gave Hitler their connection with the Jews.]

Only the deeper and broader strata of the people as such, or rather that class which is beginning to wake up and fight for its rights and freedom, cannot yet be sufficiently taken in by these methods. But this is more necessary than anything else; for the Jew feels that the possibility of his rising to a dominant role exists only if there is someone ahead of him to clear the way; and this someone he thinks he can recognize in the bourgeoisie, in their broadest strata in fact. The glovemakers and linen weavers, however, cannot be caught in the fine net of Freemasonry; no, for them coarser but no less drastic means must be employed. Thus Freemasonry is joined by a second weapon in the service of the Jews: the press. With all his perseverance and dexterity he seizes possession of it. With it he slowly begins to grip and ensnare, to guide and to push all public life, since he is in a position to create and direct that power which, under the name of 'public opinion,' IS better known today than a few decades ago.

In this he always represents himself personally as having an infinite thirst for knowledge, praises all progress, mostly, to be sure, the progress that leads to the ruin of others; for he judges all knowledge and all development only according to its possibilities for advancing his nation, and where this is lacking, he is the inexorable mortal enemy of all light, a hater of all true culture. He uses all the knowledge he acquires in the schools of other peoples, exclusively for the benefit of his race.

[One of the hang-ups Hitler had was projection. In his phrase: "...leads to the ruin of others..." he put off onto the Jews his own bad stuff.]

And this nationality he guards as never before. While he seems to overflow with 'enlightenment,' 'progress,' 'freedom,' 'humanity,' etc., he himself practices the severest segregation of his race. To be sure, he sometimes palms off his women on influential Christians, but as a matter of principle he always keeps his male line pure. He poisons the blood of others, but preserves his own. The Jew almost never marries a Christian woman; it is the Christian who marries a Jewess. The bastards, however, take after the Jewish side. Especially a part of the high nobility degenerates completely. The Jew is perfectly aware of this, and therefore systematically carries on this mode of 'disarming' the intellectual leader class of his racial adversaries. In order to mask his activity and lull his victims, however, he talks more and more of the equality of all men without regard to race and color. The fools begin to believe him. [Jews inherit Judaism from their mothers, not their fathers.]

Since, however, his whole being still has too strong a smell of the foreign for the broad masses of the people in particular to fall readily into his nets, he has his press give a picture of him which is as little in keeping with reality as conversely it serves his desired purpose. His comic papers especially strive to represent the Jews as a harmless little people, with their own peculiarities, of course--like other peoples as well--but even in their gestures, which seem a little strange, perhaps, giving signs of a possibly ludicrous, but always thoroughly honest and benevolent, soul. And the constant effort is to make him seem almost more 'insignificant' than dangerous.

His ultimate goal in this stage is the victory of 'democracy,' or, as he understands it: the rule of parliamentarianism. It is most compatible with his requirements; for it excludes the personality--and puts in its place the majority characterized by stupidity, incompetence, and last but not least, cowardice. [Some people today see the American electorate in this light.]

The final result will be the overthrow of the monarchy, which is now sooner or later bound to occur.

(j) The tremendous economic development leads to a change in the social stratification of the people. The small craftsman slowly dies out, and as a result the worker's possibility of achieving an independent existence becomes rarer and rarer; in consequence the worker becomes visibly proletarianized. There arises the industrial 'factory worker' whose most essential characteristic is to be sought in the fact that he hardly ever is in a position to found an existence of his own in later life. He is propertyless in the truest sense of the word. His old age is a torment and can scarcely be designated as living.

Once before, a similar situation was created, which pressed urgently for a solution and also found one. The peasants and artisans had slowly been joined by the officials and salaried workers--particularly of the state--as a new class. They, too, were propertyless in the truest sense of the word. The state finally found a way out of this unhealthy condition by assuming the care of the state employee who could not himself provide for his old age; it introduced the pension. Slowly, more and more enterprises followed this example, so that nearly every regularly employed brain-worker draws a pension in later life, provided the concern he works in has achieved or surpassed a certain size. Only by safeguarding the state official in his old age could he be taught the selfless devotion to duty which in the prewar period was the most eminent quality of German officialdom. [In the words: "Only by safeguarding the state official..." Hitler show his "either / or" thinking and authoritarian personality.]

In this way a whole class that had remained propertyless was wisely snatched away from social misery and articulated with the body of the people.

Now this question again, and this time on a much larger scale, faced the state and the nation. More and more masses of people, numbering millions, moved from peasant villages to the larger cities to earn their bread as factory workers in the newly established industries. The working and living conditions of the new class were more than dismal. If nothing else, the more or less mechanical transference of the old artisan's or even peasant's working methods to the new form was by no means suitable. The work done by these men could not be compared with the exertions which the industrial factory worker has to perform. In the old handicraft, this may not have been very important, but in the new working methods it was all the more so. The formal transference of the old working hours to the industrial large-scale enterprise was positively catastrophic, for the actual work done before was but little in view of the absence of our present intensive working methods. Thus, though previously the fourteen-or even fifteen-hour working day had been bearable, it certainly ceased to be bearable at a time when every minute was exploited to the fullest. The result of this senseless transference of the old working hours to the new industrial activity was really unfortunate in two respects: the worker's health was undermined and his faith in a higher justice destroyed. To this finally was added the miserable wages on the one hand and the employer's correspondingly and obviously so vastly superior position on the other.

In the country there could be no social question, since master and hired hand did the same work and above all ate out of the same bowls. But this, too, changed.

The separation of worker and employer now seems complete in all fields of life. How far the inner Judaization of our people has progressed can be seen from the small respect, if not contempt, that is accorded to manual labor. This is not German. It took the foreignization of our life, which was in truth a Jewification, to transform the old respect for manual work into a certain contempt for all physical labor.

Thus, there actually comes into being a new class enjoying very little respect, and one day the question must arise whether the nation would possess the strength to articulate the new class into general society, or whether the social difference would broaden into a class-like cleavage.

But one thing is certain: the new class did not count the worst elements in its ranks, but on the contrary definitely the most energetic elements. The over refinements of so-called culture had not yet exerted their disintegrating and destructive effects. The broad mass of the new class was not yet infected with the poison of pacifist weakness; it was robust and if necessary even brutal.

While the bourgeoisie is not at all concerned about this all-important question, but indifferently lets things slide, the Jew seizes the unlimited opportunity it offers for the future; [Projection? You bet.] while on the one hand he organizes capitalistic methods of human exploitation to their ultimate consequence, he approaches the very victims of his spirit and his activity and in a short time becomes the leader of their struggle against himself. 'Against himself' is only figuratively speaking; for the great master of lies understands as always how to make himself appear to be the pure one and to load the blame on others. Since he has the gall to lead the masses, it never even enters their heads that this might be the most in famous betrayal of all times.

[Projecting again in his term "...the great master of lies understands as always how to make himself appear to be the pure one and to load the blame on others." Untruths permeate all societies. Whoever Hitler learned from, he himself became a role model. Theocracy and plutocracy also require this technique; it is alive and well today.]

And yet it was.

Scarcely has the new class grown out of the general economic shift than the Jew, clearly and distinctly, realizes that it can open the way for his own further advancement. First, he used the bourgeoisie as a battering-ram against the feudal world, then the worker against the bourgeois world. If formerly he knew how to swindle his way to civil rights in the shadow of the bourgeoisie, now he hopes to find the road to his own domination in the worker's struggle for existence.

["...find the road to his own domination..." betrays by projection his own ambitions."]

From now on the worker has no other task but to fight for the future of the Jewish people. Unconsciously he is harnessed to the service of the power which he thinks he is combating. He is seemingly allowed to attack capital, and this is the easiest way of making him fight for it. In this the Jew keeps up an outcry against international capital and in truth he means the national economy which must be demolished in order that the international stock exchange can triumph over its dead body.

Here the Jew's procedure is as follows:

He approaches the worker, simulates pity with his fate, or even indignation at his lot of misery and poverty, thus gaining his confidence. He takes pains to study all the various real or imaginary hardships of his life--and to arouse his longing for a change in such an existence. With infinite shrewdness he fans the need for social justice, somehow slumbering in every Aryan man, into hatred against those who have been better favored by fortune, and thus gives the struggle for the elimination of social evils a very definite philosophical stamp. He establishes the Marxist doctrine. [Subtly, Hitler stirs up fear of the East.]

By presenting it as inseparably bound up with a number of socially just demands, he promotes its spread and conversely the aversion of decent people to fulfill demands which, advanced in such form and company, seem from the outset unjust and impossible to fulfill. For under this cloak of purely social ideas truly diabolic purposes are hidden, yes, they are publicly proclaimed with the most insolent frankness. This theory represents an inseparable mixture of reason and human madness, but always in such a way that only the lunacy can become reality and never the reason. By the categorical rejection of the personality and hence of the nation and its racial content, it destroys the elementary foundations of all human culture which is dependent on just these factors. This is the true inner kernel of the Marxist philosophy in so far as this figment of a criminal brain can be designated as a 'philosophy.' With the shattering of the personality and the race, the essential obstacle is removed to the domination of the inferior being--and this is the Jew.

[The East is branded as criminal and the Jew inferior. Both are to be hated and looked down upon. Without saying so, he points out the propagandist's trick: "...inseparably bound up with a number of socially just demands." This procedure too is on display today, employing just promises instead of just demands.]

Precisely in political and economic madness lies the sense of this doctrine. For this prevents all truly intelligent people from entering its service, while those who are intellectually less active and poorly educated in economics hasten to it with flying colors. The intellectuals for this movement--for even this movement needs intellectuals for its existence--are 'sacrificed' by the Jew from his own ranks.

Thus there arises a pure movement entirely of manual workers under Jewish leadership, apparently aiming to improve the situation of the worker, but in truth planning the enslavement and with it the destruction of all non-Jewish peoples. [Sound familiar? This was Hitler's WMD! Some five million Jews were herded naked into the gas chambers.]

The general pacifistic paralysis of the national instinct of self-preservation begun by Freemasonry in the circles of the so-called intelligentsia is transmitted to the broad masses and above all to the bourgeoisie by the activity of the big papers which today are always Jewish. Added to these two weapons of disintegration comes a third and by far the most terrible, the organization of brute force. As a shock and storm troop, Marxism is intended to finish off what the preparatory softening up with the first two weapons has made ripe for collapse. [Shock and awe comes to mind.]

[In the next paragraph below, Hitler describes some elements of the Authoritarian Personality.]

Here we have teamwork that is positively brilliant-and we need really not be surprised if in confronting it those very institutions which always like to represent themselves as the pillars of a more or less legendary state authority hold up least. It is in our high and highest state officialdom that the Jew has at all times (aside from a few exceptions) found the most compliant abettor of his work of disintegration. Cringing submissiveness to superiors and high-handed arrogance to inferiors distinguish this class [See Authoritarian Personality] to the same degree as a narrow-mindedness that often cries to high Heaven and is only exceeded by a self-conceit that is sometimes positively amazing.

And these are qualities that the Jew needs in our authorities and loves accordingly. [Adorno would love this, if indeed this did not contribute to his ideas. Still, Hitler is projecting again.]

The practical struggle which now begins, sketched in broad outlines, takes the following course:

In keeping with the ultimate aims of the Jewish struggle, which are not exhausted in the mere economic conquest of the world, but also demand its political subjugation, [Even the Zionists never went this far on paper. More projection on Hitler's part.] the Jew divides the organization of his Marxist world doctrine into two halves which, apparently separate from one another, in truth form an inseparable whole: the political and the trade-union movement.

The trade-union movement does the recruiting. In the hard struggle for existence which the worker must carry on, thanks to the greed and shortsightedness of many employers, it offers him aid and protection, and thus the possibility of winning better living conditions. If, at a time when the organized national community, the state, concerns itself with him little or not at all, the worker does not want to hand over the defense of his vital human rights to the blind caprice of people who in part have little sense of responsibility and are often heartless to boot, he must take their defense into his own hands. In exact proportion as the so-called national bourgeoisie, blinded by financial interests, sets the heaviest obstacles in the path of this struggle for existence and not only resists all attempts at shortening the inhumanly long working day, abolishing child labor, safeguarding and protecting the woman, improving sanitary conditions in the workshops and homes, but often actually sabotages them, the shrewder Jew takes the oppressed people under his wing. Gradually he becomes the leader of the trade-union movement, all the more easily as he is not interested in really eliminating social evils in an honest sense, but only in training an economic storm troop, blindly devoted to him, with which to destroy the national economic independence. For while the conduct of a healthy social policy will consistently move between the aims of preserving the national health on the one hand and safeguarding an independent national economy on the other, for the Jew in his struggle these two criteria not only cease to exist, but their elimination, among other things, is his life goal. He desires, not the preservation of an independent national economy, but its destruction. Consequently, no pangs of conscience can prevent him as a leader of the trade-union movement from raising demands which not only overshoot the goal, but whose fulfillment is either impossible for practical purposes or means the ruin of the national economy. Moreover, he does not want to have a healthy, sturdy race before him, but a rickety herd capable of being subjugated. This desire again permits him to raise demands of the most senseless kind whose practical fulfillment he himself knows to be impossible and which, therefore, could not lead to any change in things, but at most to a wild incitement of the masses. And that is what he is interested in and not a true and honest improvement of social conditions.

[This chapter is basically all about fear mongering and bigotry--to sway the susceptible authoritarians in Germany of the twenties. It worked and similar propaganda is working today]

T0:
Mein Kampf Catalog
Vol 1, Ch 1