Author: Adolf Hitler

Year: 1925

Source: Mein Kampf (Murphy Translation)

Note: Excerpt from Mein Kampf's chapter "Nation and Race" where Hitler explains the Jewish problem.

Mein Kampf - Recognizing the Jewish danger

The Jew offers the most striking contrast to the Aryan. There is probably no other people in the world who have so developed the instinct of self-preservation as the so-called 'chosen' people. The best proof of this statement is found in the simple fact that this race still exists. Where can another people be found that in the course of the last two thousand years has undergone so few changes in mental outlook and character as the Jewish people? And yet what other people has taken such a constant part in the great revolutions? But even after having passed through the most gigantic catastrophes that have overwhelmed mankind, the Jews remain the same as ever. What an infinitely tenacious will-to-live, to preserve one's kind, is demonstrated by that fact!

The intellectual faculties of the Jew have been trained through thousands of years. Today the Jew is looked upon as specially 'cunning'; and in a certain sense he has been so throughout the ages. His intellectual powers, however, are not the result of an inner evolution but rather have been shaped by the object-lessons which the Jew has received from others. [...]

Since the Jew--for reasons that I shall deal with immediately--never had a civilization of his own, he has always been furnished by others with a basis for his intellectual work. His intellect has always developed by the use of those cultural achievements which he has found ready-to-hand around him.

The process has never been the reverse.

For, though among the Jews the instinct of self-preservation has not been weaker but has been much stronger than among other peoples, and though the impression may easily be created that the intellectual powers of the Jew are at least equal to those of other races, the Jews completely lack the most essential pre-requisite of a cultural people, namely the idealistic spirit. With the Jewish people the readiness for sacrifice does not extend beyond the simple instinct of individual preservation. In their case the feeling of racial solidarity which they apparently manifest is nothing but a very primitive gregarious instinct, similar to that which may be found among other organisms in this world. It is a remarkable fact that this herd instinct brings individuals together for mutual protection only as long as there is a common danger which makes mutual assistance expedient or inevitable. The same pack of wolves which a moment ago joined together in a common attack on their victim will dissolve into individual wolves as soon as their hunger has been satisfied. This is also sure of horses, which unite to defend themselves against any aggressor but separate the moment the danger is over.

It is much the same with the Jew. His spirit of sacrifice is only apparent. It manifests itself only so long as the existence of the individual makes this a matter of absolute necessity. But as soon as the common foe is conquered and the danger which threatened the individual Jews is overcome and the prey secured, then the apparent harmony disappears and the original conditions set in again. Jews act in concord only when a common danger threatens them or a common prey attracts them. Where these two motives no longer exist then the most brutal egotism appears and these people who before had lived together in unity will turn into a swarm of rats that bitterly fight against each other.

If the Jews were the only people in the world they would be wallowing in filth and mire and would exploit one another and try to exterminate one another in a bitter struggle, except in so far as their utter lack of the ideal of sacrifice, which shows itself in their cowardly spirit, would prevent this struggle from developing.

Therefore it would be a complete mistake to interpret the mutual help which the Jews render one another when they have to fight--or, to put it more accurately, to exploit--their fellow being, as the expression of a certain idealistic spirit of sacrifice.

Here again the Jew merely follows the call of his individual egotism. That is why the Jewish State, which ought to be a vital organization to serve the purpose of preserving or increasing the race, has absolutely no territorial boundaries. For the territorial delimitation of a State always demands a certain idealism of spirit on the part of the race which forms that State and especially a proper acceptance of the idea of work. A State which is territorially delimited cannot be established or maintained unless the general attitude towards work be a positive one. If this attitude be lacking, then the necessary basis of a civilization is also lacking.

That is why the Jewish people, despite the intellectual powers with which they are apparently endowed, have not a culture--certainly not a culture of their own. The culture which the Jew enjoys to-day is the product of the work of others and this product is debased in the hands of the Jew.

In order to form a correct judgment of the place which the Jew holds in relation to the whole problem of human civilization, we must bear in mind the essential fact that there never has been any Jewish art and consequently that nothing of this kind exists to-day. We must realize that especially in those two royal domains of art, namely architecture and music, the Jew has done no original creative work. When the Jew comes to producing something in the field of art he merely bowdler-izes something already in existence or simply steals the intellectual word, of others. The Jew essentially lacks those qualities which are characteristic of those creative races that are the founders of civilization.

To what extent the Jew appropriates the civilization built up by others--or rather corrupts it, to speak more accurately--is indicated by the fact that he cultivates chiefly the art which calls for the smallest amount of original invention, namely the dramatic art. And even here he is nothing better than a kind of juggler or, perhaps more correctly speaking, a kind of monkey imitator; for in this domain also he lacks the creative elan which is necessary for the production of all really great work. Even here, therefore, he is not a creative genius but rather a superficial imitator who, in spite of all his retouching and tricks, cannot disguise the fact that there is no inner vitality in the shape he gives his products. At this juncture the Jewish Press comes in and renders friendly assistance by shouting hosannas over the head of even the most ordinary bungler of a Jew, until the rest of the world is stampeded into thinking that the object of so much praise must really be an artist, whereas in reality he may be nothing more than a low-class mimic.

No; the Jews have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the founding of a civilization; for in them there is not, and never has been, that spirit of idealism which is an absolutely necessary element in the higher development of mankind. Therefore the Jewish intellect will never be constructive but always destructive. At best it may serve as a stimulus in rare cases but only within the meaning of the poet's lines: 'THE POWER WHICH ALWAYS WILLS THE BAD, AND ALWAYS WORKS THE GOOD' (KRAFT, DIE STETS DAS BÖSE WILL UND STETS DAS GUTE SCHAFFT). (Note 15) It is not through his help but in spite of his help that mankind makes any progress.

Since the Jew has never had a State which was based on territorial delimitations, and therefore never a civilization of his own, the idea arose that here we were dealing with a people who had to be considered as Nomads. That is a great and mischievous mistake. The true nomad does actually possess a definite delimited territory where he lives. It is merely that he does not cultivate it, as the settled farmer does, but that he lives on the products of his herds, with which he wanders over his domain. The natural reason for this mode of existence is to be found in the fact that the soil is not fertile and that it does not give the steady produce which makes a fixed abode possible. Outside of this natural cause, however, there is a more profound cause: namely, that no mechanical civilization is at hand to make up for the natural poverty of the region in question. There are territories where the Aryan can establish fixed settlements by means of the technical skill which he has developed in the course of more than a thousand years, even though these territories would otherwise have to be abandoned, unless the Aryan were willing to wander about them in nomadic fashion; but his technical tradition and his age-long experience of the use of technical means would probably make the nomadic life unbearable for him. We ought to remember that during the first period of American colonization numerous Aryans earned their daily livelihood as trappers and hunters, etc., frequently wandering about in large groups with their women and children, their mode of existence very much resembling that of ordinary nomads. The moment, however, that they grew more numerous and were able to accumulate larger resources, they cleared the land and drove out the aborigines, at the same time establishing settlements which rapidly increased all over the country.

The Aryan himself was probably at first a nomad and became a settler in the course of ages. But yet he was never of the Jewish kind. The Jew is not a nomad; for the nomad has already a definite attitude towards the concept of 'work', and this attitude served as the basis of a later cultural development, when the necessary intellectual conditions were at hand. There is a certain amount of idealism in the general attitude of the nomad, even though it be rather primitive. His whole character may, therefore, be foreign to Aryan feeling but it will never be repulsive. But not even the slightest trace of idealism exists in the Jewish character. The Jew has never been a nomad, but always a parasite, battening on the substance of others. If he occasionally abandoned regions where he had hitherto lived he did not do it voluntarily. He did it because from time to time he was driven out by people who were tired of having their hospitality abused by such guests. Jewish self-expansion is a parasitic phenomenon--since the Jew is always looking for new pastures for his race.

But this has nothing to do with nomadic life as such; because the Jew does not ever think of leaving a territory which he has once occupied. He sticks where he is with such tenacity that he can hardly be driven out even by superior physical force. He expands into new territories only when certain conditions for his existence are provided therein; but even then--unlike the nomad--he will not change his former abode. He is and remains a parasite, a sponger who, like a pernicious bacillus, spreads over wider and wider areas according as some favourable area attracts him. The effect produced by his presence is also like that of the vampire; for wherever he establishes himself the people who grant him hospitality are bound to be bled to death sooner or later. Thus the Jew has at all times lived in States that have belonged to other races and within the organization of those States he had formed a State of his own, which is, however, hidden behind the mask of a 'religious community', as long as external circumstances do not make it advisable for this community to declare its true nature. As soon as the Jew feels himself sufficiently established in his position to be able to hold it without a disguise, he lifts the mask and suddenly appears in the character which so many did not formerly believe or wish to see: namely that of the Jew.

The life which the Jew lives as a parasite thriving on the substance of other nations and States has resulted in developing that specific character which Schopenhauer once described when he spoke of the Jew as 'The Great Master of Lies'. The kind of existence which he leads forces the Jew to the systematic use of falsehood, just as naturally as the inhabitants of northern climates are forced to wear warm clothes.

He can live among other nations and States only as long as he succeeds in persuading them that the Jews are not a distinct people but the representatives of a religious faith who thus constitute a 'religious community', though this be of a peculiar character.

As a matter of fact, however, this is the first of his great falsehoods.

He is obliged to conceal his own particular character and mode of life that he may be allowed to continue his existence as a parasite among the nations. The greater the intelligence of the individual Jew, the better will he succeed in deceiving others. His success in this line may even go so far that the people who grant him hospitality may be led to believe that the Jew among them is a genuine Frenchman, for instance, or Englishman or German or Italian, who just happens to belong to a religious denomination which is different from that prevailing in these countries. Especially in circles concerned with the executive administration of the State, where the officials generally have only a minimum of historical sense, the Jew is able to impose his infamous deception with comparative ease. In these circles independent thinking is considered a sin against the sacred rules according to which official promotion takes place. It is therefore not surprising that even to-day in the Bavarian government offices, for example, there is not the slightest suspicion that the Jews form a distinct nation themselves and are not merely the adherents of a 'Confession', though one glance at the Press which belongs to the Jews ought to furnish sufficient evidence to the contrary even for those who possess only the smallest degree of intelligence. The JEWISH ECHO, however, is not an official gazette and therefore not authoritative in the eyes of those government potentates.

Jewry has always been a nation of a definite racial character and never differentiated merely by the fact of belonging to a certain religion. At a very early date, urged on by the desire to make their way in the world, the Jews began to cast about for a means whereby they might distract such attention as might prove inconvenient for them. What could be more effective and at the same time more above suspicion than to borrow and utilize the idea of the religious community? Here also everything is copied, or rather stolen; for the Jew could not possess any religious institution which had developed out of his own consciousness, seeing that he lacks every kind of idealism; which means that belief in a life beyond this terrestrial existence is foreign to him. In the Aryan mind no religion can ever be imagined unless it embodies the conviction that life in some form or other will continue after death. As a matter of fact, the Talmud is not a book that lays down principles according to which the individual should prepare for the life to come.

It only furnishes rules for a practical and convenient life in this world.

The religious teaching of the Jews is principally a collection of instructions for maintaining the Jewish blood pure and for regulating intercourse between Jews and the rest of the world: that is to say, their relation with non-Jews. But the Jewish religious teaching is not concerned with moral problems. It is rather concerned with economic problems, and very petty ones at that. In regard to the moral value of the religious teaching of the Jews there exist and always have existed quite exhaustive studies (not from the Jewish side; for whatever the Jews have written on this question has naturally always been of a tendentious character) which show up the kind of religion that the Jews have in a light that makes it look very uncanny to the Aryan mind. The Jew himself is the best example of the kind of product which this religious training evolves. His life is of this world only and his mentality is as foreign to the true spirit of Christianity as his character was foreign to the great Founder of this new creed two thousand years ago. And the Founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of His estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests. But at that time Christ was nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards the Jews; whereas our modern Christians enter into party politics and when elections are being held they debase themselves to beg for Jewish votes. They even enter into political intrigues with the atheistic Jewish parties against the interests of their own Christian nation.

On this first and fundamental lie, the purpose of which is to make people believe that Jewry is not a nation but a religion, other lies are subsequently based. One of those further lies, for example, is in connection with the language spoken by the Jew. For him language is not an instrument for the expression of his inner thoughts but rather a means of cloaking them. When talking French his thoughts are Jewish and when writing German rhymes he only gives expression to the character of his own race.

As long as the Jew has not succeeded in mastering other peoples he is forced to speak their language whether he likes it or not. But the moment that the world would become the slave of the Jew it would have to learn some other language (Esperanto, for example) so that by this means the Jew could dominate all the more easily.

How much the whole existence of this people is based on a permanent falsehood is proved in a unique way by 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', which are so violently repudiated by the Jews. With groans and moans, the FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG repeats again and again that these are forgeries. This alone is evidence in favour of their authenticity. What many Jews unconsciously wish to do is here clearly set forth. It is not necessary to ask out of what Jewish brain these revelations sprang; but what is of vital interest is that they disclose, with an almost terrifying precision, the mentality and methods of action characteristic of the Jewish people and these writings expound in all their various directions the final aims towards which the Jews are striving. The study of real happenings, however, is the best way of judging the authenticity of those documents. If the historical developments which have taken place within the last few centuries be studied in the light of this book we shall understand why the Jewish Press incessantly repudiates and denounces it. For the Jewish peril will be stamped out the moment the general public come into possession of that book and understand it.

In order to get to know the Jew properly it is necessary to study the road which he has been following among the other peoples during the last few centuries. One example will suffice to give a clear insight here. Since his career has been the same at all epochs--just as the people at whose expense he has lived have remained the same--for the purposes of making the requisite analysis it will be best to mark his progress by stages. For the sake of simplicity we shall indicate these stages by letters of the alphabet.

The first Jews came into what was then called Germania during the period of the Roman invasion; and, as usual, they came as merchants. During the turmoil caused by the great migrations of the German tribes the Jews seem to have disappeared. We may therefore consider the period when the Germans formed the first political communities as the beginning of that process whereby Central and Northern Europe was again, and this time permanently, Judaized. A development began which has always been the same or similar wherever and whenever Jews came into contact with Aryan peoples.

(a) As soon as the first permanent settlements had been established the Jew was suddenly 'there'. He arrived as a merchant and in the beginning did not trouble to disguise his nationality. He still remained openly a Jew, partly it may be because he knew too little of the language. It may also be that people of other races refused to mix with him, so that he could not very well adopt any other appearance than that of a foreign merchant. Because of his subtlety and cunning and the lack of experience on the part of the people whose guest he became, it was not to his disadvantage openly to retain his Jewish character. This may even have been advantageous to him; for the foreigner was received kindly.

(b) Slowly but steadily he began to take part in the economic life around him; not as a producer, however, but only as a middleman. His commercial cunning, acquired through thousands of years of negotiation as an intermediary, made him superior in this field to the Aryans, who were still quite ingenuous and indeed clumsy and whose honesty was unlimited; so that after a short while commerce seemed destined to become a Jewish monopoly. The Jew began by lending out money at usurious interest, which is a permanent trade of his. It was he who first introduced the payment of interest on borrowed money. The danger which this innovation involved was not at first recognized; indeed the innovation was welcomed, because it offered momentary advantages.

(c) At this stage the Jew had become firmly settled down; that is to say, he inhabited special sections of the cities and towns and had his own quarter in the market-places. Thus he gradually came to form a State within a State. He came to look upon the commercial domain and all money transactions as a privilege belonging exclusively to himself and he exploited it ruthlessly.

(d) At this stage finance and trade had become his complete monopoly. Finally, his usurious rate of interest aroused opposition and the increasing impudence which the Jew began to manifest all round stirred up popular indignation, while his display of wealth gave rise to popular envy. The cup of his iniquity became full to the brim when he included landed property among his commercial wares and degraded the soil to the level of a market commodity. Since he himself never cultivated the soil but considered it as an object to be exploited, on which the peasant may still remain but only on condition that he submits to the most heartless exactions of his new master, public antipathy against the Jew steadily increased and finally turned into open animosity. His extortionate tyranny became so unbearable that people rebelled against his control and used physical violence against him. They began to scrutinize this foreigner somewhat more closely, and then began to discover the repulsive traits and characteristics inherent in him, until finally an abyss opened between the Jews and their hosts, across which abyss there could be no further contact.

In times of distress a wave of public anger has usually arisen against the Jew; the masses have taken the law into their own hands; they have seized Jewish property and ruined the Jew in their urge to protect themselves against what they consider to be a scourge of God. Having come to know the Jew intimately through the course of centuries, in times of distress they looked upon his presence among them as a public danger comparable only to the plague.

(e) But then the Jew began to reveal his true character. He paid court to governments, with servile flattery, used his money to ingratiate himself further and thus regularly secured for himself once again the privilege of exploiting his victim. Although public wrath flared up against this eternal profiteer and drove him out, after a few years he reappeared in those same places and carried on as before. No persecution could force him to give up his trade of exploiting other people and no amount of harrying succeeded in driving him out permanently. He always returned after a short time and it was always the old story with him.

In an effort to save at least the worst from happening, legislation was passed which debarred the Jew from obtaining possession of the land.

(f) In proportion as the powers of kings and princes increased, the Jew sidled up to them. He begged for 'charters' and 'privileges' which those gentlemen, who were generally in financial straits, gladly granted if they received adequate payment in return. However high the price he has to pay, the Jew will succeed in getting it back within a few years from operating the privilege he has acquired, even with interest and compound interest. He is a real leech who clings to the body of his unfortunate victims and cannot be removed; so that when the princes found themselves in need once again they took the blood from his swollen veins with their own hands.

This game was repeated unendingly. In the case of those who were called 'German Princes', the part they played was quite as contemptible as that played by the Jew. They were a real scourge for their people. Their compeers may be found in some of the government ministers of our time.

It was due to the German princes that the German nation could not succeed in definitely freeing itself from the Jewish peril. Unfortunately the situation did not change at a later period. The princes finally received the reward which they had a thousandfold deserved for all the crimes committed by them against their own people. They had allied themselves with Satan and later on they discovered that they were in Satan's embrace.

(g) By permitting themselves to be entangled in the toils of the Jew, the princes prepared their own downfall. The position which they held among their people was slowly but steadily undermined not only by their continued failure to guard the interests of their subjects but by the positive exploitation of them. The Jew calculated exactly the time when the downfall of the princes was approaching and did his best to hasten it. He intensified their financial difficulties by hindering them in the exercise of their duty towards their people, by inveigling them through the most servile flatteries into further personal display, whereby he made himself more and more indispensable to them. His astuteness, or rather his utter unscrupulousness, in money affairs enabled him to exact new income from the princes, to squeeze the money out of them and then have it spent as quickly as possible. Every Court had its 'Court Jews', as this plague was called, who tortured the innocent victims until they were driven to despair; while at the same time this Jew provided the means which the princes squandered on their own pleasures. It is not to be wondered at that these ornaments of the human race became the recipients of official honours and even were admitted into the ranks of the hereditary nobility, thus contributing not only to expose that social institution to ridicule but also to contaminate it from the inside.

Naturally the Jew could now exploit the position to which he had attained and push himself forward even more rapidly than before. Finally he became baptized and thus entitled to all the rights and privileges which belonged to the children of the nation on which he preyed. This was a high-class stroke of business for him, and he often availed himself of it, to the great joy of the Church, which was proud of having gained a new child in the Faith, and also to the joy of Israel, which was happy at seeing the trick pulled off successfully.

(h) At this stage a transformation began to take place in the world of Jewry. Up to now they had been Jews--that is to say, they did not hitherto set any great value on pretending to be something else; and anyhow the distinctive characteristics which separated them from other races could not be easily overcome. Even as late as the time of Frederick the Great nobody looked upon the Jews as other than a 'foreign' people, and Goethe rose up in revolt against the failure legally to prohibit marriage between Christians and Jews. Goethe was certainly no reactionary and no time-server. What he said came from the voice of the blood and the voice of reason. Notwithstanding the disgraceful happenings taking place in Court circles, the people recognized instinctively that the Jew was the foreign body in their own flesh and their attitude towards him was directed by recognition of that fact.

But a change was now destined to take place. In the course of more than a thousand years the Jew had learned to master the language of his hosts so thoroughly that he considered he might now lay stress on his Jewish character and emphasize the 'Germanism' a bit more. Though it must have appeared ridiculous and absurd at first sight, he was impudent enough to call himself a 'Teuton', which in this case meant a German. In that way began one of the most infamous impositions that can be imagined. The Jew did not possess the slightest traces of the German character. He had only acquired the art of twisting the German language to his own uses, and that in a disgusting way, without having assimilated any other feature of the German character. Therefore his command of the language was the sole ground on which he could pretend to be a German. It is not however by the tie of language, but exclusively by the tie of blood that the members of a race are bound together. And the Jew himself knows this better than any other, seeing that he attaches so little importance to the preservation of his own language while at the same time he strives his utmost to maintain his blood free from intermixture with that of other races. A man may acquire and use a new language without much trouble; but it is only his old ideas that he expresses through the new language. His inner nature is not modified thereby. The best proof of this is furnished by the Jew himself. He may speak a thousand tongues and yet his Jewish nature will remain always one and the same. His distinguishing characteristics were the same when he spoke the Latin language at Ostia two thousand years ago as a merchant in grain, as they are to-day when he tries to sell adulterated flour with the aid of his German gibberish. He is always the same Jew. That so obvious a fact is not recognized by the average head-clerk in a German government department, or by an officer in the police administration, is also a self-evident and natural fact; since it would be difficult to find another class of people who are so lacking in instinct and intelligence as the civil servants employed by our modern German State authorities.

The reason why, at the stage I am dealing with, the Jew so suddenly decided to transform himself into a German is not difficult to discover. He felt the power of the princes slowly crumbling and therefore looked about to find a new social plank on which he might stand. Furthermore, his financial domination over all the spheres of economic life had become so powerful that he felt he could no longer sustain that enormous structure or add to it unless he were admitted to the full enjoyment of the 'rights of citizenship.' He aimed at both, preservation and expansion; for the higher he could climb the more alluring became the prospect of reaching the old goal, which was promised to him in ancient times, namely world-rulership, and which he now looked forward to with feverish eyes, as he thought he saw it visibly approaching. Therefore all his efforts were now directed to becoming a fully-fledged citizen, endowed with all civil and political rights.

That was the reason for his emancipation from the Ghetto.

(i) And thus the Court Jew slowly developed into the national Jew. But naturally he still remained associated with persons in higher quarters and he even attempted to push his way further into the inner circles of the ruling set. But at the same time some other representatives of his race were currying favour with the people. If we remember the crimes the Jew had committed against the masses of the people in the course of so many centuries, how repeatedly and ruthlessly he exploited them and how he sucked out even the very marrow of their substance, and when we further remember how they gradually came to hate him and finally considered him as a public scourge--then we may well understand how difficult the Jew must have found this final transformation. Yes, indeed, it must tax all their powers to be able to present themselves as 'friends of humanity' to the poor victims whom they have skinned raw.

Therefore the Jew began by making public amends for the crimes which he had committed against the people in the past. He started his metamorphosis by first appearing as the 'benefactor' of humanity. Since his new philanthropic policy had a very concrete aim in view, he could not very well apply to himself the biblical counsel, not to allow the left hand to know what the right hand is giving. He felt obliged to let as many people as possible know how deeply the sufferings of the masses grieved him and to what excesses of personal sacrifice he was ready to go in order to help them. With this manifestation of innate modesty, so typical of the Jew, he trumpeted his virtues before the world until finally the world actually began to believe him. Those who refused to share this belief were considered to be doing him an injustice. Thus after a little while he began to twist things around, so as to make it appear that it was he who had always been wronged, and vice versa. There were really some particularly foolish people who could not help pitying this poor unfortunate creature of a Jew.

Attention may be called to the fact that, in spite of his proclaimed readiness to make personal sacrifices, the Jew never becomes poor thereby. He has a happy knack of always making both ends meet. Occasionally his benevolence might be compared to the manure which is not spread over the field merely for the purpose of getting rid of it, but rather with a view to future produce. Anyhow, after a comparatively short period of time, the world was given to know that the Jew had become a general benefactor and philanthropist. What a transformation!

What is looked upon as more or less natural when done by other people here became an object of astonishment, and even sometimes of admiration, because it was considered so unusual in a Jew. That is why he has received more credit for his acts of benevolence than ordinary mortals.

And something more: The Jew became liberal all of a sudden and began to talk enthusiastically of how human progress must be encouraged. Gradually he assumed the air of being the herald of a new age.

Yet at the same time he continued to undermine the ground-work of that part of the economic system in which the people have the most practical interest. He bought up stock in the various national undertakings and thus pushed his influence into the circuit of national production, making this latter an object of buying and selling on the stock exchange, or rather what might be called the pawn in a financial game of chess, and thus ruining the basis on which personal proprietorship alone is possible. Only with the entrance of the Jew did that feeling of estrangement, between employers and employees begin which led at a later date to the political class-struggle.

Finally the Jew gained an increasing influence in all economic undertakings by means of his predominance in the stock-exchange. If not the ownership, at least he secured control of the working power of the nation.

In order to strengthen his political position, he directed his efforts towards removing the barrier of racial and civic discrimination which had hitherto hindered his advance at every turn. With characteristic tenacity he championed the cause of religious tolerance for this purpose; and in the freemason organization, which had fallen completely into his hands, he found a magnificent weapon which helped him to achieve his ends. Government circles, as well as the higher sections of the political and commercial bourgeoisie, fell a prey to his plans through his manipulation of the masonic net, though they themselves did not even suspect what was happening.

Only the people as such, or rather the masses which were just becoming conscious of their own power and were beginning to use it in the fight for their rights and liberties, had hitherto escaped the grip of the Jew. At least his influence had not yet penetrated to the deeper and wider sections of the people. This was unsatisfactory to him. The most important phase of his policy was therefore to secure control over the people. The Jew realized that in his efforts to reach the position of public despot he would need a 'peacemaker.' And he thought he could find a peace-maker if he could whip-in sufficient extensive sections of the bourgeois. But the freemasons failed to catch the glove-manufacturers and the linen-weavers in the frail meshes of their net. And so it became necessary to find a grosser and withal a more effective means. Thus another weapon beside that of freemasonry would have to be secured. This was the Press. The Jew exercised all his skill and tenacity in getting hold of it. By means of the Press he began gradually to control public life in its entirety. He began to drive it along the road which he had chosen to reach his own ends; for he was now in a position to create and direct that force which, under the name of 'public opinion' is better known to-day than it was some decades ago.

Simultaneously the Jew gave himself the air of thirsting after knowledge. He lauded every phase of progress, particularly those phases which led to the ruin of others; for he judges all progress and development from the standpoint of the advantages which these bring to his own people. When it brings him no such advantages he is the deadly enemy of enlightenment and hates all culture which is real culture as such. All the knowledge which he acquires in the schools of others is exploited by him exclusively in the service of his own race.

Even more watchfully than ever before, he now stood guard over his Jewish nationality. Though bubbling over with 'enlightenment', 'progress', 'liberty', 'humanity', etc., his first care was to preserve the racial integrity of his own people. He occasionally bestowed one of his female members on an influential Christian; but the racial stock of his male descendants was always preserved unmixed fundamentally. He poisons the blood of others but preserves his own blood unadulterated. The Jew scarcely ever marries a Christian girl, but the Christian takes a Jewess to wife. The mongrels that are a result of this latter union always declare themselves on the Jewish side. Thus a part of the higher nobility in particular became completely degenerate. The Jew was well aware of this fact and systematically used this means of disarming the intellectual leaders of the opposite race. To mask his tactics and fool his victims, he talks of the equality of all men, no matter what their race or colour may be. And the simpletons begin to believe him.

Since his whole nature still retains too foreign an odour for the broad masses of the people to allow themselves to be caught in his snare, he uses the Press to put before the public a picture of himself which is entirely untrue to life but well designed to serve his purpose. In the comic papers special efforts are made to represent the Jews as an inoffensive little race which, like all others, has its peculiarities. In spite of their manners, which may seem a bit strange, the comic papers present the Jews as fundamentally good-hearted and honourable. Attempts are generally made to make them appear insignificant rather than dangerous.

During this phase of his progress the chief goal of the Jew was the victory of democracy, or rather the supreme hegemony of the parliamentary system, which embodies his concept of democracy. This institution harmonises best with his purposes; for thus the personal element is eliminated and in its place we have the dunder-headed majority, inefficiency and, last but by no means least, knavery.

The final result must necessarily have been the overthrow of the monarchy, which had to happen sooner or later.

[...]

In the open country there could be no social problem, because the master and the farmhand were doing the same kind of work and doing it together. They ate their food in common, and sometimes even out of the same dish. But in this sphere also the new system introduced an entirely different set of conditions between masters and men.

The division created between employer and employees seems not to have extended to all branches of life. How far this Judaizing process has been allowed to take effect among our people is illustrated by the fact that manual labour not only receives practically no recognition but is even considered degrading. That is not a natural German attitude. It is due to the introduction of a foreign element into our lives, and that foreign element is the Jewish spirit, one of the effects of which has been to transform the high esteem in which our handicrafts once were held into a definite feeling that all physical labour is something base and unworthy.

Thus a new social class has grown up which stands in low esteem; and the day must come when we shall have to face the question of whether the nation will be able to make this class an integral part of the social community or whether the difference of status now existing will become a permanent gulf separating this class from the others.

One thing, however, is certain: This class does not include the worst elements of the community in its ranks. Rather the contrary is the truth: it includes the most energetic parts of the nation. The sophistication which is the result of a so-called civilization has not yet exercised its disintegrating and degenerating influence on this class. The broad masses of this new lower class, constituted by the manual labourers, have not yet fallen a prey to the morbid weakness of pacifism. These are still robust and, if necessary, they can be brutal.

While our bourgeoisie middle class paid no attention at all to this momentous problem and indifferently allowed events to take their course, the Jew seized upon the manifold possibilities which the situation offered him for the future. While on the one hand he organized capitalistic methods of exploitation to their ultimate degree of efficiency, he curried favour with the victims of his policy and his power and in a short while became the leader of their struggle against himself. 'Against himself' is here only a figurative way of speaking; for this 'Great Master of Lies' knows how to appear in the guise of the innocent and throw the guilt on others. Since he had the impudence to take a personal lead among the masses, they never for a moment suspected that they were falling a prey to one of the most infamous deceits ever practised. And yet that is what it actually was.

The moment this new class had arisen out of the general economic situation and taken shape as a definite body in the social order, the Jew saw clearly where he would find the necessary pacemaker for his own progressive march. At first he had used the bourgeois class as a battering-ram against the feudal order; and now he used the worker against the bourgeois world. Just as he succeeded in obtaining civic rights by intrigues carried on under the protection of the bourgeois class, he now hoped that by joining in the struggle which the workers were waging for their own existence he would be able to obtain full control over them.

When that moment arrives, then the only objective the workers will have to fight for will be the future of the Jewish people. Without knowing it, the worker is placing himself at the service of the very power against which he believes he is fighting. Apparently he is made to fight against capital and thus he is all the more easily brought to fight for capitalist interests. Outcries are systematically raised against international capital but in reality it is against the structure of national economics that these slogans are directed. The idea is to demolish this structure and on its ruins triumphantly erect the structure of the International Stock Exchange.

In this line of action the procedure of the Jew was as follows:

He kowtowed to the worker, hypocritically pretended to feel pity for him and his lot, and even to be indignant at the misery and poverty which the worker had to endure. That is the way in which the Jew endeavoured to gain the confidence of the working class. He showed himself eager to study their various hardships, whether real or imaginary, and strove to awaken a yearning on the part of the workers to change the conditions under which they lived. The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning for social justice which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that yearning became alive it was transformed into hatred against those in more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of social wrongs. And thus the Marxist doctrine was invented.

By presenting his doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively. But at the same time he provoked the opposition of decent people who refused to admit these demands which, because of the form and pseudo-philosophical trimmings in which they are presented, seemed fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization. For, under the cloak of purely social concepts there are hidden aims which are of a Satanic character. These aims are even expounded in the open with the clarity of unlimited impudence. This Marxist doctrine is an individual mixture of human reason and human absurdity; but the combination is arranged in such a way that only the absurd part of it could ever be put into practice, but never the reasonable part of it. By categorically repudiating the personal worth of the individual and also the nation and its racial constituent, this doctrine destroys the fundamental basis of all civilization; for civilization essentially depends on these very factors. Such is the true essence of the Marxist WELTANSCHAUUNG, so far as the word WELTANSCHAUUNG can be applied at all to this phantom arising from a criminal brain. The destruction of the concept of personality and of race removes the chief obstacle which barred the way to domination of the social body by its inferior elements, which are the Jews.

The very absurdity of the economic and political theories of Marxism gives the doctrine its peculiar significance. Because of its pseudo-logic, intelligent people refuse to support it, while all those who are less accustomed to use their intellectual faculties, or who have only a rudimentary notion of economic principles, join the Marxist cause with flying banners. The intelligence behind the movement--for even this movement needs intelligence if it is to subsist--is supplied by the Jews themselves, naturally of course as a gratuitous service which is at the same time a sacrifice on their part.

Thus arose a movement which was composed exclusively of manual workers under the leadership of Jews. To all external appearances, this movement strives to ameliorate the conditions under which the workers live; but in reality its aim is to enslave and thereby annihilate the non-Jewish races.

The propaganda which the freemasons had carried on among the so-called intelligentsia, whereby their pacifist teaching paralysed the instinct for national selfpreservation, was now extended to the broad masses of the workers and bourgeoisie by means of the Press, which was almost everywhere in Jewish hands. To those two instruments of disintegration a third and still more ruthless one was added, namely, the organization of brute physical force among the masses. As massed columns of attacks, the Marxist troops stormed those parts of the social order which had been left standing after the two former undermining operations had done their work.

The combined activity of all these forces has been marvellously managed. And it will not be surprising if it turns out that those institutions which have always appeared as the organs of the more or less traditional authority of the State should now fall before the Marxist attack. Among our higher and highest State officials, with very few exceptions, the Jew has found the cost complacent backers in his work of destruction. An attitude of sneaking servility towards 'superiors' and supercilious arrogance towards 'inferiors' are the characteristics of this class of people, as well as a grade of stupidity which is really frightening and at the same time a towering self-conceit, which has been so consistently developed to make it amusing.

But these qualities are of the greatest utility to the Jew in his dealings with our authorities. Therefore they are qualities which he appreciates most in the officials.

If I were to sketch roughly the actual struggle which is now beginning I should describe it somewhat thus:

Not satisfied with the economic conquest of the world, but also demanding that it must come under his political control, the Jew subdivides the organized Marxist power into two parts, which correspond to the ultimate objectives that are to be fought for in this struggle which is carried on under the direction of the Jew. To outward appearance, these seem to be two independent movements, but in reality they constitute an indivisible unity. The two divisions are: The political movement and the trades union movement.

The trades union movement has to gather in the recruits. It offers assistance and protection to the workers in the hard struggle which they have to wage for the bare means of existence, a struggle which has been occasioned by the greediness and narrow-mindedness of many of the industrialists. Unless the workers be ready to surrender all claims to an existence which the dignity of human nature itself demands, and unless they are ready to submit their fate to the will of employers who in many cases have no sense of human responsibilities and are utterly callous to human wants, then the worker must necessarily take matters into his own hands, seeing that the organized social community--that is to say, the State--pays no attention to his needs.

The so-called national-minded bourgeoisie, blinded by its own material interests, opposes this life-or-death struggle of the workers and places the most difficult obstacles in their way. Not only does this bourgeoisie hinder all efforts to enact legislation which would shorten the inhumanly long hours of work, prohibit child-labour, grant security and protection to women and improve the hygienic conditions of the workshops and the dwellings of the working-class, but while the bourgeoisie hinders all this the shrewd Jew takes the cause of the oppressed into his own hands. He gradually becomes the leader of the trades union movements, which is an easy task for him, because he does not genuinely intend to find remedies for the social wrong: he pursues only one objective, namely, to gather and consolidate a body of followers who will act under his commands as an armed weapon in the economic war for the destruction of national economic independence. For, while a sound social policy has to move between the two poles of securing a decent level of public health and welfare on the one hand and, on the other, that of safeguarding the independence of the economic life of the nation, the Jew does not take these poles into account at all. The destruction of both is one of his main objects. He would ruin, rather than safeguard, the independence of the national economic system. Therefore, as the leader of the trades union movement, he has no scruples about putting forward demands which not only go beyond the declared purpose of the movement but could not be carried into effect without ruining the national economic structure. On the other hand, he has no interest in seeing a healthy and sturdy population develop; he would be more content to see the people degenerate into an unthinking herd which could be reduced to total subjection. Because these are his final objectives, he can afford to put forward the most absurd claims. He knows very well that these claims can never be realized and that therefore nothing in the actual state of affairs could be altered by them, but that the most they can do is to arouse the spirit of unrest among the masses. That is exactly the purpose which he wishes such propaganda to serve and not a real and honest improvement of the social conditions.

The Jews will therefore remain the unquestioned leaders of the trades union movement so long as a campaign is not undertaken, which must be carried out on gigantic lines, for the enlightenment of the masses; so that they will be enabled better to understand the causes of their misery. Or the same end might be achieved if the government authorities would get rid of the Jew and his work. For as long as the masses remain so ill-informed as they actually are to-day, and as long as the State remains as indifferent to their lot as it now is, the masses will follow whatever leader makes them the most extravagant promises in regard to economic matters. The Jew is a past master at this art and his activities are not hampered by moral considerations of any kind.

Naturally it takes him only a short time to defeat all his competitors in this field and drive them from the scene of action. In accordance with the general brutality and rapacity of his nature, he turns the trades union movement into an organization for the exercise of physical violence. The resistance of those whose common sense has hitherto saved them from surrendering to the Jewish dictatorship is now broken down by terrorization. The success of that kind of activity is enormous.

Parallel with this, the political organization advances. It operates hand-in-hand with the trades union movement, inasmuch as the latter prepares the masses for the political organization and even forces them into it. This is also the source that provides the money which the political organization needs to keep its enormous apparatus in action. The trades union organization is the organ of control for the political activity of its members and whips in the masses for all great political demonstrations. In the end it ceases to struggle for economic interests but places its chief weapon, the refusal to continue work--which takes the form of a general strike--at the disposal of the political movement.

By means of a Press whose contents are adapted to the level of the most ignorant readers, the political and trades union organizations are provided with an instrument which prepares the lowest stratum of the nation for a campaign of ruthless destruction. It is not considered part of the purpose of this Press to inspire its readers with ideals which might help them to lift their minds above the sordid conditions of their daily lives; but, on the contrary, it panders to their lowest instincts. Among the lazy-minded and self-seeking sections of the masses this kind of speculation turns out lucrative.

It is this Press above all which carries on a fanatical campaign of calumny, strives to tear down everything that might be considered as a mainstay of national independence and to sabotage all cultural values as well as to destroy the autonomy of the national economic system.

It aims its attack especially against all men of character who refuse to fall into line with the Jewish efforts to obtain control over the State or who appear dangerous to the Jews merely because of their superior intelligence. For in order to incur the enmity of the Jew it is not necessary to show any open hostility towards him. It is quite sufficient if one be considered capable of opposing the Jew some time in the future or using his abilities and character to enhance the power and position of a nation which the Jew finds hostile to himself.

The Jewish instinct, which never fails where these problems have to be dealt with, readily discerns the true mentality of those whom the Jew meets in everyday life; and those who are not of a kindred spirit with him may be sure of being listed among his enemies. Since the Jew is not the object of aggression but the aggressor himself, he considers as his enemies not only those who attack him but also those who may be capable of resisting him. The means which he employs to break people of this kind, who may show themselves decent and upright, are not the open means generally used in honourable conflict, but falsehood and calumny.

He will stop at nothing. His utterly low-down conduct is so appalling that one really cannot be surprised if in the imagination of our people the Jew is pictured as the incarnation of Satan and the symbol of evil.

The ignorance of the broad masses as regards the inner character of the Jew, and the lack of instinct and insight that our upper classes display, are some of the reasons which explain how it is that so many people fall an easy prey to the systematic campaign of falsehood which the Jew carries on.

While the upper classes, with their innate cowardliness, turn away from anyone whom the Jew thus attacks with lies and calumny, the common people are credulous of everything, whether because of their ignorance or their simple-mindedness. Government authorities wrap themselves up in a robe of silence, but more frequently they persecute the victims of Jewish attacks in order to stop the campaign in the Jewish Press. To the fatuous mind of the government official such a line of conduct appears to belong to the policy of upholding the authority of the State and preserving public order. Gradually the Marxist weapon in the hands of the Jew becomes a constant bogy to decent people. Sometimes the fear of it sticks in the brain or weighs upon them as a kind of nightmare. People begin to quail before this fearful foe and therewith become his victims.

(k) The Jewish domination in the State seems now so fully assured that not only can he now afford to call himself a Jew once again, but he even acknowledges freely and openly what his ideas are on racial and political questions. A section of the Jews avows itself quite openly as an alien people, but even here there is another falsehood. When the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the new national consciousness of the Jews will be satisfied by the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the Jews thereby adopt another means to dupe the simple-minded Gentile. They have not the slightest intention of building up a Jewish State in Palestine so as to live in it. What they really are aiming at is to establish a central organization for their international swindling and cheating. As a sovereign State, this cannot be controlled by any of the other States. Therefore it can serve as a refuge for swindlers who have been found out and at the same time a high-school for the training of other swindlers.

As a sign of their growing presumption and sense of security, a certain section of them openly and impudently proclaim their Jewish nationality while another section hypocritically pretend that they are German, French or English as the case may be.

Their blatant behaviour in their relations with other people shows how clearly they envisage their day of triumph in the near future.

The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew uses every possible means to undermine the racial foundations of a subjugated people. In his systematic efforts to ruin girls and women he strives to break down the last barriers of discrimination between him and other peoples. The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate. For as long as a people remain racially pure and are conscious of the treasure of their blood, they can never be overcome by the Jew. Never in this world can the Jew become master of any people except a bastardized people.

That is why the Jew systematically endeavours to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.

In the field of politics he now begins to replace the idea of democracy by introducing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the masses organized under the Marxist banners he has found a weapon which makes it possible for him to discard democracy, so as to subjugate and rule in a dictatorial fashion by the aid of brute force. He is systematically working in two ways to bring about this revolution. These ways are the economic and the political respectively.

Aided by international influences, he forms a ring of enemies around those nations which have proved themselves too sturdy for him in withstanding attacks from within. He would like to force them into war and then, if it should be necessary to his plans, he will unfurl the banners of revolt even while the troops are actually fighting at the front.

Economically he brings about the destruction of the State by a systematic method of sabotaging social enterprises until these become so costly that they are taken out of the hands of the State and then submitted to the control of Jewish finance. Politically he works to withdraw from the State its means of susbsistence, inasmuch as he undermines the foundations of national resistance and defence, destroys the confidence which the people have in their Government, reviles the past and its history and drags everything national down into the gutter.

Culturally his activity consists in bowdlerizing art, literature and the theatre, holding the expressions of national sentiment up to scorn, overturning all concepts of the sublime and beautiful, the worthy and the good, finally dragging the people to the level of his own low mentality.

Of religion he makes a mockery. Morality and decency are described as antiquated prejudices and thus a systematic attack is made to undermine those last foundations on which the national being must rest if the nation is to struggle for its existence in this world.

(l) Now begins the great and final revolution. As soon as the Jew is in possession of political power he drops the last few veils which have hitherto helped to conceal his features. Out of the democratic Jew, the Jew of the People, arises the 'Jew of the Blood', the tyrant of the peoples. In the course of a few years he endeavours to exterminate all those who represent the national intelligence. And by thus depriving the peoples of their natural intellectual leaders he fits them for their fate as slaves under a lasting despotism.

Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that country the Jew killed or starved thirty millions of the people, in a bout of savage fanaticism and partly by the employment of inhuman torture. And he did this so that a gang of Jewish literati and financial bandits should dominate over a great people.

But the final consequence is not merely that the people lose all their freedom under the domination of the Jews, but that in the end these parasites themselves disappear. The death of the victim is followed sooner or later by that of the vampire.

If we review all the causes which contributed to bring about the downfall of the German people we shall find that the most profound and decisive cause must be attributed to the lack of insight into the racial problem and especially in the failure to recognize the Jewish danger.

It would have been easy enough to endure the defeats suffered on the battlefields in August 1918. They were nothing when compared with the military victories which our nation had achieved. Our downfall was not the result of those defeats; but we were overthrown by that force which had prepared those defeats by systematically operating for several decades to destroy those political instincts and that moral stamina which alone enable a people to struggle for its existence and therewith secure the right to exist.

By neglecting the problem of preserving the racial foundations of our national life, the old Empire abrogated the sole right which entitles a people to live on this planet. Nations that make mongrels of their people, or allow their people to be turned into mongrels, sin against the Will of Eternal Providence. And thus their overthrow at the hands of a stronger opponent cannot be looked upon as a wrong but, on the contrary, as a restoration of justice. If a people refuses to guard and uphold the qualities with which it has been endowed by Nature and which have their roots in the racial blood, then such a people has no right to complain over the loss of its earthly existence.

Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be the cause of a later resurgence.

Every visitation of distress can give a new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression those forces can develop which bring about a new re-birth of the national soul--provided always that the racial blood is kept pure.

But the loss of racial purity will wreck inner happiness for ever. It degrades men for all time to come. And the physical and moral consequences can never be wiped out.

If this unique problem be studied and compared with the other problems of life we shall easily recognize how small is their importance in comparison with this. They are all limited to time; but the problem of the maintenance or loss of the purity of the racial blood will last as long as man himself lasts.

All the symptoms of decline which manifested themselves already in pre-war times can be traced back to the racial problem.

Whether one is dealing with questions of general law, or monstrous excrescences in economic life, of phenomena which point to a cultural decline or political degeneration, whether it be a question of defects in the school-system or of the evil influence which the Press exerts over the adult population--always and everywhere these phenomena are at bottom caused by a lack of consideration for the interests of the race to which one's own nation belongs, or by the failure to recognize the danger that comes from allowing a foreign race to exist within the national body.

That is why all attempts at reform, all institutions for social relief, all political striving, all economic progress and all apparent increase in the general stock of knowledge, were doomed to be unproductive of any significant results. The nation, as well as the organization which enables it to exist--namely, the State--were not developing in inner strength and stability, but, on the contrary, were visibly losing their vitality. The false brilliance of the Second Empire could not disguise the inner weakness. And every attempt to invigorate it anew failed because the main and most important problem was left out of consideration.

It would be a mistake to think that the followers of the various political parties which tried to doctor the condition of the German people, or even all their leaders, were bad in themselves or meant wrong. Their activity even at best was doomed to fail, merely because of the fact that they saw nothing but the symptoms of our general malady and they tried to doctor the symptoms while they overlooked the real cause of the disease. If one makes a methodical study of the lines along which the old Empire developed one cannot help seeing, after a careful political analysis, that a process of inner degeneration had already set in even at the time when the united Empire was formed and the German nation began to make rapid external progress. The general situation was declining, in spite of the apparent political success and in spite of the increasing economic wealth. At the elections to the Reichstag the growing number of Marxist votes indicated that the internal breakdown and the political collapse were then rapidly approaching. All the victories of the so-called bourgeois parties were fruitless, not only because they could not prevent the numerical increase in the growing mass of Marxist votes, even when the bourgeois parties triumphed at the polls, but mainly because they themselves were already infected with the germs of decay. Though quite unaware of it, the bourgeois world was infected from within with the deadly virus of Marxist ideas. The fact that they sometimes openly resisted was to be explained by the competitive strife among ambitious political leaders, rather than by attributing it to any opposition in principle between adversaries who were determined to fight one another to the bitter end. During all those years only one protagonist was fighting with steadfast perseverance. This was the Jew. The Star of David steadily ascended as the will to national self-preservation declined.

Therefore it was not a solid national phalanx that, of itself and out of its own feeling of solidarity, rushed to the battlefields in August 1914. But it was rather the manifestation of the last flicker from the instinct of national self-preservation against the progress of the paralysis with which the pacifist and Marxist doctrine threatened our people. Even in those days when the destinies of the nation were in the balance the internal enemy was not recognized; therefore all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain. Providence did not grant the reward to the victorious sword, but followed the eternal law of retributive justice. A profound recognition of all this was the source of those principles and tendencies which inspire our new movement. We were convinced that only by recognizing such truths could we stop the national decline in Germany and lay a granite foundation on which the State could again be built up, a State which would not be a piece of mechanism alien to our people, constituted for economic purposes and interests, but an organism created from the soul of the people themselves.

A GERMAN STATE IN A GERMAN NATION

Notes

[Note 15. When Mephistopheles first appears to Faust, in the latter's study, Faust inquires: "What is thy name?" To which Mephistopheles replies: "A part of the Power which always wills the Bad and always works the Good." And when Faust asks him what is meant by this riddle and why he should call himself 'a part,' the gist of Mephistopheles' reply is that he is the Spirit of Negation and exists through opposition to the positive Truth and Order and Beauty which proceed from the never-ending creative energy of the Deity. In the Prologue to Faust the Lord declares that man's active nature would grow sluggishin working the good and that therefore he has to be aroused by the Spirit of Opposition. This Spirit wills the Bad, but of itself it can do nothing positive, and by its opposition always works the opposite of what it wills.]