Violence... The story so far

Adolf Hitler

Update: 29 April 2007

Volume One - "A Reckoning"
Annotated but unabridged.

[FORWARD: By no means is the commentary on this page meant to be taken as simply an indictment of leaders in our age--neither Abu Grhaib nor Guantanamo were equipped with gas chambers. Rather, it is the long view that is important--along with understanding just how fragile the American style of democracy is, and how it might be corrupted. Hitler's more revealing statements are in red.]

[FURTHERMORE: Hitler, himself a sociopath, had an Authoritarian Populace all too ready to believe. Milgram found many Americans are similarly authoritarian. Altemeyer and Dean go further: They demonstrate that Authoritarianism permeates politics and when extreme, threatens the very constitutional system that gives them license to run for office and corrupt the democratic system. Authoritarians are anything but democratic. But they are gifted in cloaking their causes in the democratic flag. This feature has not changed since Hitler's day. He did it. We do it today. Authoritarians are typically conservative Republicans, but many are also Democrats. Neither political party is immune to their influence.]

Hence the Jewish leadership in trade-union affairs remains uncontested until an enormous work of enlightenment influences the broad masses and sets them right about their never-ending misery, or else the state disposes of the Jew and his work. [Statements like this doubtless led Einstein and many other enlightened Jews to leave Germany. Hitler defeated his own purpose. He could not even imagine the "correct path" toward his genocidal goals which lay before him, much less follow it.] For as long as the insight of the masses remains as slight as now and the state as indifferent as today, these masses will always be first to follow the man who in economic matters offers the most shameless promises. [And so it remains too often true today, for both Jew and Gentile.] And in this the Jew is a master. For in his entire activity he is restrained by no moral scruples! [Demonizing, much as we see it on all fronts today.]

And so he inevitably drives every competitor in this sphere from the field in a short time. In keeping with all his inner rapacious brutality, he at once teaches the trade-union movement the most brutal use of violence. If anyone by his intelligence resists the Jewish lures, his defiance and understanding are broken by terror. The success of such an activity is enormous. [Draping Judaism in terror, by projection he forecast his own future. What better example of projection could there possibly be? Though not psychotic, he was definitely out of touch with social realities. Sure there are despotic Jews, but the proportion is not different from any other group over the long haul.]

Actually the Jew, by means of the trade union, which could be a blessing for the nation, shatters the foundations of the national economy.

Parallel with this, the political organization advances.

It plays hand in glove with the trade-union movement, for the latter prepares the masses for political organization, in fact, lashes them into it with violence and coercion. Furthermore, it is the permanent financial source from which the political organization feeds its enormous apparatus. It is the organ controlling the political activity of the individual and does the pandering in all big demonstrations of a political nature. In the end it no longer comes out for political interests at all, but places its chief instrument of struggle, the cessation of work in the form of a mass and general strike, in the service of the political idea.

By the creation of a press whose content is adapted to the intellectual horizon of the least educated people, the political and trade-union organization finally obtains the agitational institution by which the lowest strata of the nation are made ripe for the most reckless acts. [His own propaganda apparatus followed this formula! It is really amazing how such a demonic person wore his "heart" and thoughts on his sleeve. More amazing still is that only a few German Jews caught on and were free thinking enough to leave.] Its function is not to lead people out of the swamp of a base mentality to a higher stage, but to cater to their lowest instincts. Since the masses are as mentally lazy as they are sometimes presumptuous, this is a business as speculative as it is profitable. [And "profitable" for him it was as well. Remember, Hitler is projecting here. The Jews as a group were not like that. But a fringe, like the Zealots, could well have been. The Zealots relied on daggers, but effectively called attention to their cause nonetheless. They employed very public acts of murder of Roman legionnaires or Jewish citizens they considered guilty of apostasy or betrayal. Remarkably, the Zealots took lessons from the Romans and the Punic Wars with their chemical warfare by poisoning wells, granaries, and the water supply of Jerusalem. All this is very much the model for what is going on today, especially in the Middle East. The Zealots only reigned for some seven years, but they profoundly affected Jewish history, especially in Jerusalem Palestine. It was the Romans, who did not distinguish them from Zealots, that kicked the Jews out of Jerusalem. What we see now is equivalent to round two, with great differences of course.]

It is this press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.

Above all, it hammers away at the characters of all those who will not bow down to the Jewish presumption to dominate, or whose ability and genius in themselves seem a danger to the Jew. For to be hated by the Jew it is not necessary to combat him; no, it suffices if he suspects that someone might even conceive the idea of combating him some time or that on the strength of his superior genius he is an augmenter of the power and greatness of a nationality hostile to the Jew.

His unfailing instinct in such things scents the original soul in everyone, and his hostility is assured to anyone who is not spirit of his spirit. Since the Jew is not the attacked but the attacker, not only anyone who attacks passes as his enemy, but also anyone who resists him. But the means with which he seeks to break such reckless but upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and slander. [Some things never change; lies and slander are all too common in American politics, the same as Hitler's own example.]

Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.

The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper classes, make the people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign of lies. [Hitler exploited this same scheme of things.]

While from innate cowardice the upper classes turn away from a man whom the Jew attacks with lies and slander, the broad masses from stupidity or simplicity believe everything. [How fortunate for Hitler. He would re-experience Hell if he could read what comes next. One can only conclude that Hitler learned his trade from the Jews. What he did with it was beyond all comparison with any day or age. Even though the differences are huge, the methods of the Zionists today are all too similar. On display here also is Hitler's own need to have a class of people to look down upon, even as he ruled them.] The state authorities either cloak themselves in silence or, what usually happens, in order to put an end to the Jewish press campaign, they persecute the unjustly attacked, which, in the eyes of such an official ass, passes as the preservation of state authority and the safeguarding of law and order.

Slowly fear of the Marxist weapon of Jewry descends like a nightmare on the mind and soul of decent people. [For a war drum to be heard and heeded, there must be fear. Fear of Marxist Jewry was Hitler's choice. In our time it is terrorism and nuclear genies. Again there are vast differences in degree even as the mechanism is similar.]

They begin to tremble before the terrible enemy and thus have become his final victim.

The Jew's domination in the state seems so assured that now not only can he call himself a Jew again, but he ruthlessly admits his ultimate national and political designs. A section of his race openly owns itself to be a foreign people, yet even here they lie. For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. [A Hebrew and Yiddish word meaning someone who is not Jewish.] It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks. [This is extreme to be sure. The Zionists achieved a Jewish State with sovereign rights with critical help from America. Hitler, of course wanted to dominate the world, and this gives some discomfort. It is that discomfort, and the "certainty" of the equivalence betweem Zinoists and Hitler in the Arab view that must be dealt with. Arabs view Israel in the lands that were Palestine like a cancer. Whether or not we like the idea, it is this perception and the apparent reality that must be dealt with. Many Western commentators agree with their Middle Eastern counterparts on this score.]

It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, Frenchman, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race. [Mein Kampf is "open effrontery" itself. His choice of these words is projection again. We can be sure he was not aware of his own hang-ups, or even that his ideas were in fact extremes. This does not change his criminality.]

How close they see approaching victory can be seen by the hideous aspect which their relations with the members of other peoples takes on.

With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

[Here Hitler begins a summary more or less in street language directed to the average German.]

For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone. [He blows smoke here but German society bought into it.]

And so he tries systematically to lower the racial level by a continuous poisoning of individuals.

And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat. [As Hitler himself soon did.]

In the organized mass of Marxism he has found the weapon which lets him dispense with democracy and in its stead allows him to subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

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.

[Smoke of fear and bigotry but rising to rhetorical heights.]

Now begins the great last revolution. In gaining political power the Jew casts off the few cloaks that he still wears. The democratic people's Jew becomes the blood-Jew and tyrant over peoples. [Hitler's own path.] In a few years he tries to exterminate the national intelligentsia and by robbing the peoples of their natural intellectual leadership makes them ripe for the slave's lot of permanent subjugation. [We can be thankful that when Hitler himself went down this path that the scientists who re-framed our view of nature fled his domain.]

The most frightful example of this kind is offered by Russia, where he killed or starved about thirty million people with positively fanatical savagery, in part amid inhuman tortures, in order to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock exchange bandits domination over a great people. [Confusing Stalinism with Judaism as part of his own propaganda.]

The end is not only the end of the freedom of the peoples oppressed by the Jew, but also the end of this parasite upon the nations. After the death of his victim, the vampire sooner or later dies too. [Foretelling his own end.]

If we pass all the causes of the German collapse in review, the ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the racial problem and especially the Jewish menace. [Authoritarian to the core.]

The defeats on the battlefield in August, 1918, would have been child's play to bear. They stood in no proportion to the victories of our people. It was not they that caused our downfall; no, it was brought about by that power which prepared these defeats by systematically over many decades robbing our people of the political and moral instincts and forces which alone make nations capable and hence worthy of existence. [This is gibberish but is a rare insight into the violent mind. Put yourself in the shoes of the German, humiliated, down and out. Under those conditions it is easier for you to buy into extreme views. Remember, too, these words were written while Hitler was in prison. Doubtless that gave him time to reflect with his own guard down. His "apparent paranoia," a projection, is on full display.]

In heedlessly ignoring the question of the preservation of the racial foundations of our nation, the old Reich disregarded the sole right which gives life in this world. Peoples which bastardize themselves, or let themselves be bastardized, sin against the will of eternal Providence, [invoking religion] and when their ruin is encompassed by a stronger enemy it is not an injustice done to them, but only the restoration of justice. If a people no longer wants to respect the Nature-given qualities of its being which root in its blood, it has no further right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence. [This was likely more for rallying the Germans to the Aryan cause than as a profession of faith. But his desire to "regularize" his relationship with Eva Braun hours before their suicides betrayed a fear of the hereafter.]

Everything on this earth is capable of improvement. Every defeat can become the father of a subsequent victory, every lost war the cause of a later resurgence, every hardship the fertilization of human energy, and from every oppression the forces for a new spiritual rebirth can come as long as the blood is preserved pure.

The lost purity of the blood alone destroys inner happiness forever, plunges man into the abyss for all time, and the consequences can never more be eliminated from body and spirit.

Only by examining and comparing all other problems of life in the light of this one question shall we see how absurdly petty they are by this standard. They are all limited in time-but the question of preserving or not preserving the purity of the blood will endure as long as there are men. [Gibberish of course. But Germans of his time, deeply humiliated, at the bottom of the heap, desperately needed someone "below" them, someone they could look down on. Hitler provided that "someone" brilliantly.]

All really significant symptoms of decay of the prewar period can in the last analysis be reduced to racial causes. [Either-or thinking (yes-no in this case) at its "worst."]

Whether we consider questions of general justice or cankers of economic life, symptoms of cultural decline or processes of political degeneration, questions of faulty schooling or the bad influence exerted on grown-ups by the press, etc., everywhere and always it is fundamentally the disregard of the racial needs of our own people or failure to see a foreign racial menace.

And that is why all attempts at reform, all works for social relief and political exertions, all economic expansion and every apparent increase of intellectual knowledge were futile as far as their results were concerned. The nation, and the organism which enables and preserves its life on this earth, the state, did not grow inwardly healthier, but obviously languished more and more. All the illusory prosperity of the old Reich could not hide its inner weakness, and every attempt really to strengthen the Reich failed again and again, due to disregarding the most important question.

It would be a mistake to believe that the adherents of the various political tendencies which were tinkering around on the German national body--yes, even a certain section of the leaders--were bad or malevolent men in themselves. Their activity was condemned to sterility only because the best of them saw at most the forms of our general disease and tried to combat them, but blindly ignored the virus. Anyone who systematically follows the old Reich's line of political development is bound to arrive, upon calm examination, at the realization that even at the time of the unification, hence the rise of the German nation, the inner decay was already in full swing, and that despite all apparent political successes and despite increasing economic wealth, the general situation was deteriorating from year to year. If nothing else, the elections for the Reichstag announced, with their outward swelling of the Marxist vote, the steadily approaching inward and hence also outward collapse. All the successes of the so-called bourgeois parties were worthless, not only because even with so-called bourgeois electoral victories they were unable to halt the numerical growth of the Marxist flood, but because they themselves above all now bore the ferments of decay in their own bodies. Without suspecting it, the bourgeois world itself was inwardly infected with the deadly poison of Marxist ideas and its resistance often sprang more from the competitor's envy of ambitious leaders than from a fundamental rejection of adversaries determined to fight to the utmost. In these long years there was only one who kept up an imperturbable, unflagging fight, and this was the Jew, his Star of David rose higher and higher in proportion as our people's will for self-preservation vanished.

Therefore, in August, 1914, it was not a people resolved to attack which rushed to the battlefield; no, it was only the last flicker of the national instinct of self-preservation in face of the progressing pacifist-Marxist paralysis of our national body. Since even in these days of destiny, our people did not recognize the inner enemy, all outward resistance was in vain and Providence did not bestow her reward on the victorious sword, but followed the law of eternal retribution.

On the basis of this inner realization, there took form in our new movement the leading principles as well as the tendency, which in our conviction were alone capable, not only of halting the decline of the German people, but of creating the granite foundation upon which some day a state will rest which represents, not an alien mechanism of economic concerns and interests, but a national organism: A German State of the German Nation.

---

Editorial Notes

Hitler preferred to use the word man in Mein Kampf, not woman, not human, humankind. So it is no surprise that this bigot and sexist totally ignored the fact that the first person to recognize nuclear fission was a Jew, in his own time, in his own country, and a woman. Following up on her discovery, instead of attacking the Jews and going to war with the world, he could surely have realized his dreams of a Third Reich. Sadly Lisa Meitner never received the accolades she was due for such a fundamental and historic discovery.

The wonder is also that such a wretched man could achieve so much by oratory and charisma alone; this speaks volumes for the political process and the authoritarian individuals who followed him so blindly and fanatically. His fellow Germans had just been defeated and humiliated in a great war, so they were vulnerable to any offering to better their lot.

We see this on display again in our age, muted and tuned to our times for sure, but a movement in America is aspiring to dominate the world; like Hitler, they have said as much on paper! New hi-tech means are available for them to do so. These means cannot be denied if unleashed for that purpose. Nothing less than democratic society is at risk.

We have made much of the Authoritarian Personality. Hitler defined the basic type in Mein Kampf and did so derisively even though he was one. One of his hang-ups was reaction formation [killing Jews for the very things he saw (perhaps even despised) in himself]. Another was projection--how he got his power [his view of things resonated with enough Germans to abolish an old order. Once in power, all pretense of democracy could be dropped]. He had tremendous oratorical skills, and he was a consummate organizer of those with an authoritarian mind set. So Adorno did indeed have some help available when he studied Germany after the war. But the parallels between German politics in the '30s and what is going on today are not just stunning, they are frightening. A few commentators have "gently" picked up on this already.

Consider the history, then ask yourself: "where are today's parallels?"

Hitler used the Communists and Jews to frighten the public.
How are we frightened by our leaders today?

Hitler discovered the 'German Workers' Party' giving him a spring board.
Is there an equivalent intellectual spring board movement today?

Hitler had an authoritarian populace all too ready to believe. Milgram showed us that most Americans are also authoritarians. Altemeyer and Dean add further proof if any is needed.
Could Hitler have been wrong?

Hitler was a master propagandist and orator; very charismatic, defined the photo-op.
Where do we see these characteristics today?

Hitler brought his media under his control.
The reported refusal of CBS to air ads on the environment or liberal views of politics during the Super Bowl resonate with the shakeout in broadcasting that favors plutocratic, conservative, and religious fundamentalist interests at the expense of public information.
Does this mean that freedom of speech is under attack?
What is happening with the American media?

Hitler's nation was bankrupt. America's deficit is increasing by the trillion.
Who benefits and who loses from deep tax cuts at a time of ballooning public debt?
Why is this necessary?

Hitler's people were wounded in their self esteem after WWI. Americans are incomparably better off, but many feel "wounded" by: bin Laden, Vietnam, the relentless ubiquity of terror, 2.5 million fewer jobs in a growing population, the effect of the soaring income gap via Enron-style corporate irresponsibility, etc.
Pride is a relative thing; are we losing ours?

To be sure there are numerous and vast differences between Hitler's Germany and America today. One is huge indeed: this administration shows no signs of being overtly genocidal. Several other differences are highly significant technically, like communication and nuclear missiles. Populations are now larger and more sophisticated. International law and trade, NATO and the UN exist to put brakes on any Hitlerian-style world domination. China and India are growing powers with huge potential in opening markets to go with no history of conquest. They are a significant, maybe even critical, stabilizing influence in our times. Today, religion is a much wider problem than it was in Hitler's day. And terror is more ubiquitous than ever.

Nevertheless, America is the New Empire in any meaningful sense of the word. For this reason alone we must become and remain alert to our responsibilities to guard the future of all humankind. By our abuse of the environment, not supporting the UN, warring on a non-threatening country that was essentially defenseless, and by setting back the progress of women the world over, we are not living up to our potential or responsibility. Our approach to the terror problem seems clouded with self-interest (national interest if you prefer), and personal vengeance. When we humiliate others we can only expect terror in return. See Humiliation. All this started decades ago; 9/11 is just the most recent chapter.

The "March of Folly" continues; Barbara Tuchman would not be surprised.


T0:
Mein Kampf Catalog
Vol 1, Ch 1