# Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 12

Chapter XII
Early Development of the Nazi Party.
Often great reform movements have but a single man as leader, but millions of people as followers.
Some goal may for centuries burn as the passionate desire of countless people, until finally one man arises as the standard-bearer who knows how to bring victory.
Viewing the German situation politically, as it was in 1918, a people torn in two parts can be seen.
One class, by far the smallest, is of the intelligentsia, exclusive of all who do physical labor. It is apparently nationalistic, but is actually so in a most diluted sense, for it tries to support its ideas with intellectual weapons which are fragmentary and superficial. Such weapons fail sadly in the face of opposing savagery. A single blow has overthrown this class which recently ruled; now, shaking with cowardly humiliation and fear, it accepts whatever the brutal victor chooses to do.
Facing this class is a much larger one, the proletarian mass. Somewhat united by various Marxist movements, this group is anti-national; but it includes the elements of the nation without which a national revival is impossible.
Cannons Or Butter?
It was clear by 1918 that any recovery of the German people needed more than mere arms—Germany became helpless not because arms were lacking, but because her desire for self-preservation had been milked of its potency.
The question of Germany regaining her power is not: how can we manufacture arms?
It is: how can we create the spirit of a people worthy to bear arms?
Once this spirit arises in a people, it will find a thousand ways, every one of which ends with arms!
One allies oneself with men, not with weapons.
Therefore the British must be looked upon as the most valuable ally in the world as long as its leadership and its masses lead one to count upon that brutality and perseverance which bring victories.
The weakness of our fifteen million Marxists, Democrats, Pacificists and people of the Centre—affected by Jewish poison or by parliamentary ideas—is so clear to foreign powers that we have no hope today of forging any worth-while alliance.
The great masses, who can fight, who can perform or refuse to perform the necessary industrial labor which lends power to a nation, and who can be managed, must be won over to the ideal of our national freedom. before a New Germany is conceivable.
“War is the aim of every alliance which is not foolish and worthless.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter XXVI
Aims and Tactics
Thus we realized as early as 1919 that the new movement must consider as its chief aim the nationalization of the masses.
As to tactics:
(1) No social sacrifice can be considered as too great if it can win the masses to the service of the nation.
    (That is: to the services of the would-be dictator.)
Profit-Mad Employers, Too
Few can acknowledge—although some of our businessmen and other people manage to—that in the long run there can be any economic rise for anyone as long as the national solidarity of the masses of the nation is lacking. If the German unions during the World War had protected the rights of the workers from the profit-mad employers even going so far as to stage countless strikes extorting thousandfold benefits, only so long as they always first of all fanatically considered the fate of Germany, we would not have lost the war. How unimportant any economic concessions, even the greatest, would have been compared to the vast importance of a war victory!
A movement trying to give the German worker back to the German people must never consider any economic sacrifices too great, unless they endanger the independence of the national economy.
(2) National education of the masses can only come through social improvement, for that alone will create those economic conditions which allow the individual to share in the culture of the nation.
(3) The masses can only be captured by a ruthless and fanatic one-sided presentation of our nationalistic idea.
Most people are neither professors nor diplomats; their views are based upon sentiment, and not upon reason. These people are not susceptible to half-measures—they fall victim to force. Their attitudes are generally stable, just because they are little influenced by reasoning—for faith is stronger than knowledge, love less changeable than respect, hate more everlasting than mere dislike.
The dynamic force which has made the most important changes in history has always been—not scientific intellect—but rather a fanatic feeling of hysteria which has hurled the masses in one direction or the other.
(4) To win the soul of the people, it is not enough merely to fight for one’s own end—one must at the same time destroy the upholders of the opposite cause.
A savage attack upon some adversary is proof to the people of the justice of their own cause.
The masses feel that if their leaders refrain from destroying an opponent, this must be a sign of uncertainty of their own cause—if not a sign that the cause is unjust.
The masses are only a fragment of nature, and their feelings cannot understand a handclasp between men who proclaim opposite views. What they want is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation of the weaker, or else his unconditional enslavement.
The nationalization of our masses will succeed only if, together with the positive battle for the soul of our people, its international poisoners are wiped out.
(5) The German blood must be purified, and the alien Jew dealt with, or there will be no resurrection of the German nation. The race question is the key to world history and to human civilization.
(6) Just as a worker sins against his community if he makes a demand based upon power, without consideration for the welfare and existence of the community, so an employer injures the community if he abuses the communal working strength through exploitation, inhumanity, and general profiteering out of sweat. Too many employers consider every attempt to guard the interests of the employee as an attack upon the nation.
Might Makes Right
The task at hand is to take the workers from their internationalist insanity, and enlist their weight behind a movement aimed to bring them economic justice within the national economy.
The winning of the Bourgeois voting cattle must never be the aim of the movement—this would only weigh it down with dull paralysing weight.
Acute class distinctions are not to be abolished by fraternizing—the mass must develop its own force for its upward surge.
(7) The propaganda of the movement must be directed only at one side, for if it were directed at both, the difference between the Bourgeois and the mass mind would mean that any propaganda launched would either be misunderstood by one group, or else it would be automatically rejected by the other.
If propaganda, by word or gesture, applies itself to the coarseness and feelings of the masses, it will be objected to by the “intelligentsia” as vulgar. But on the other hand, if the propaganda sacrifices its primitive expression, it will not be possible for it to reach its broad masses.
Generally speaking, the ideas which I have already summed up under the heading “war propaganda” are sufficient for the guidance of the young movement’s work of enlightenment.
(8) Every idea designed to change the world has not only the right but the duty to adopt any means which make possible the achievement of its aims. (sic.!)
    (The above statement, odd as it seems, is actually the Nazi philosophy. Goering has said the same thing in different words: “It isn’t important who is right—the important thing is who wins!”
(9) Our movement is in attitude, and also in inner structure, anti-parliamentary. It throws away the idea of decision by majority rule—by which the leader is degraded into the mere executive of the opinion of the others.
The leader of the entire party is the only leader elected; once elected, he assumes full responsibility and dictates. He appoints the next-highest leaders, and these in turn appoint the group leaders who come after them, until finally the lowest officer is thus appointed. All leaders are chosen from above.
The followers of the movement are free to call the supreme leader to account, and to throw him out of office; then a new leader is chosen, and given the same authorities and responsibilities.
    (This is in flat contradiction of Hitler’s previous statement. If the followers of the movement are free to call the leader to account and to “throw him out of office” that is in fact representative government. The essential characteristic of the dictator state is the inability of the people to oust the Dictator once he has seized power. Hitler’s dread secret political police, the Gestapo terrorizes all Germans—putting thousands in concentration camps, killing thousands more—precisely in order to insure that the masses cannot “throw him out of office”. Launching a battleship at Wilhelmshaven before 80,000 Germans on April 1, 1939, Hitler made an address from a rostrum circled by bullet proof glass so that no one could depose him by the only possible method—assassination.)
Only the hero is suited for such serious leadership. Man’s progress depends upon the genius and energy of individuals, and not upon any majorities.
Our movement is anti-parliamentary and if it participates in parliament the sole aim is to smash it.
    (Thie raises the vital question, which must be considered in the United States today. Should free democratic rights—free speech, right of assembly, etc.—be granted to groups whose primary aim is to smash the very system, democracy, which grants them those rights?)
(10) The movement flatly refuses to commit itself on questions outside the frame of its political work, or not ​important to the achievement of its ideas.
The party’s task is not to lead a religious reformation. It regards both the Catholic and Protestant denominations as equally valuable supports for the existence of the people and so attacks whoever tries to injure these foundations of our religious and moral character.
    (This is, of course, an effort to win religious support for the Nazi movement, for at the time Hitler wrote this passage he was not yet powerful enough openly to attack the churches.
    (This statement of Hitler’s makes strange reading today, in view of the open, continued, and violent Nazi persecution of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany.
    (The Völkischer Beobachter, principal Nazi newspaper, states flatly: “We are armed to continue the battle against Catholicism to the point of total annihilation.”
    (Alfred Rosenberg, present-day Dictator of German Culture, sneers at the customary interpretation of Christ, declaring it is conceived by “Jewish fanatics like Matthew, by materialistic rabbis like Paul, by mongrel half-breeds like Augustine.”
    (Nordland, official Nazi Pagan magazine, mocks the Sermon on the Mount as the “First Bolshevist Manifesto.”
    (Dr. Rudolf Dahms, Nazi scholar, writes, “We reject the Christ of the dogmas—the Jesus Christ who no longer corresponds to our Nordic faith.”
    (Wilhelm Hauer, founder of the German Movement, writes: “We must protest against the claim of the Christian religion to be the religion of the German nation. For its essence is quite foreign and repugnant to us. Before us lies the goal of a Teutonic, German morality, which will rank higher than that of Christianity.”
    (Pope Pius XI, after the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, found it necessary continually to refer to the “tragic and memorable hour through which Germany is passing.” He sadly cried out, “The threat of great evil is becoming constantly stronger and more frightening … hysteria of thought, idea, and action which is neither Christian nor human seems to prevail.”
    Propaganda Minister Goebbles issued orders to the press in 1938 to refer henceforth to Catholics and Communists as linked, thus varying the older and almost played-out theme, “Jews are Communists and Communists are Jews.”)
(11) The movement’s inner organization is a matter of expediency and not of principle.
The best organization places between the leader and the followers the greatest possible organizational gap. The task is to impart a certain ideal—which originates in the head of an individual—through a body of people, and for this elaborate technical apparatus is not needed.
The practical development of every idea fighting for realization is broadly as follows:
A great idea springs from the brain of a man who thereupon feels himself called upon to transmit this to all mankind. Preaching his views, he slowly wins followers. This is the ideal way.
The increasing number of believers finally makes it impossible for the teacher personally to guide each individual, and then it is time for the necessary evil of organization—units are formed to carry on local work. To preserve the unity of the movement, this sub-organization must never be allowed to take place until the authority of the founder is regarded as absolute.
The existence of a Mecca or a Rome, a headquarters or a founding-place which can create a great magic power, is of great importance. It must be made to seem ever more important—Munich must be our Mecca.
Local groups must be formed only after the authority of the group in Munich is established as unconditional leader.
Some group leaders can be trained with the aid of funds in the party treasury; but due to lack of great financial means the movement must begin by relying chiefly upon honorary leaders.
(12) It is a mistake to believe that a movement is made more powerful by uniting it with some similar movement—for the increase in size does not mean an increase in power; instead, such a union according to the law of nature, means weakness.
Nazi Maxim: Never Compromise
The greatness of a powerful organization as the bearer of an idea depends upon the absolutely religious fanaticism with which it intolerantly imposes itself over everything else—fanatically convinced of its own rightness!
The greatness of Christianity was due to its fanatical crying of its own doctrine—and not to any compromises with somewhat similar philosophical opinions.
    (This criticism of the policy of compromise is especially interesting when applied to the short-lived Popular Front formed in France by the enemies of of internal Fascism and of Hitler and Mussolini in the spring of 1936. In order to achieve a majority, the labor and left parties—including the Communist party—formed a coalition in which it was thought necessary to include the Radical Socialists, who, despite their name, were middle-of-the roaders. Inclusion of the Radical Socialists made real unity impossible, destroying the entire force of the movement, and in March, 1938, while Hitler was marching into Austria, France, in the midst of a home crisis was actually wthout a government. In a short time a majority was established composed of the Radical Socialists in alliance with parties of the right against the parties of the left. This government, headed by Daladier of the Radical Socialists, proceeded to follow a policy of routine capitulation to Hitler, and, among other things, signed the Munich Pact which doomed Czechoslovakia.)
Forget Humanity
“Nations fighting for existence on this planet should not concern themselves with particulars of humaneness and aesthetics. Nature does not know these driveling things—questions of destiny have no obligations to beauty.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter VI
(13) The followers of the movement must not be afraid of the hostility of their adversaries—they should consider it proof of the justification of their existence. They should long for the hatred of enemies of our nationality and our view of the world.
    (Today in Mussolini’s Italy this doctrine is neatly expressed in four words white-washed on the walls of many buildings: “Many enemies—much honor.”)
He who is not libeled and abused by the Jew newspapers is no decent German and no true Nazi. The greatest standard to judge him by is the amount of hostility he provokes in this mortal enemy of our people.
It must, again and again, be pointed out to the followers of the movement—and to all the People of Germany—that the Jew always tells lies in his newspaper.
Every Jewish denunciation and every Jewish lie is a scar of honor on the body of our battlers.
He whom the Jew most mortally hates is our greatest friend.
He who picks up a Jewish newspaper in the morning and does not find himself slandered in it has not profitably spent the previous day!
As these principles enter the souls of our followers, the movement will become invincible.
(14) The movement must create respect for individual personality—when a great mind is no longer paid homage the great energy which springs forth from the names of great men and also women is lost. All the great events of history are inseparably linked to the names of the geniuses who were their cause.
    (The man who wrote that paragraph is the ruthless dictator who has “burnt the books”, driven out Germany’s greatest scientists, writers, musicians, and who has forbidden the mere mention of some of Germany’s greatest people, living and dead.)
Of course, the Jew, member of a race whose great men are all destructors, scornfully labels all this “idolatrous worship of the man.”
If Only They’d Laughed
In the early days of our movement, nothing caused us greater suffering than our insignificance—the obscurity of our names made success doubtful.
It was difficult then, when sometimes only six, seven or eight came together to listen to a speaker, to awaken and hold faith in the future even in this inner group.
Imagine six or seven men, all poor, never heard-of people getting together with the intention of forming a movement supposed to achieve what the gigantic parties failed in—the resurrection of a German Reich with greater power and magnificence! If someone had attacked us then—yes, if only someone had laughed at us—we would have rejoiced. Lack of attention was the greatest woe, particularly to me, at that time.
When I entered the party nothing at all really existed. No one in Munich even knew the party by name, save a handful of followers, and their friends.
Every Wednesday we held a committee meeting in a Munich cafe, and once a week a meeting was devoted to discussion or to lectures.
Seeking new members we began holding “meetings” every month, and later every two weeks. Invitations for these were written on a typewriter—or even by hand—and spread about personally by our few members. Each tried to persuade his friends to visit some meeting or other.
The result was miserable.
I remember how once I myself passed out about eighty of those bills, and how that evening we expected masses of people. But after an hour’s delay the chairman finally had to open the meeting. We were again seven men—the old seven.
We had invitation bills printed in a Munich shop, and for the meeting so advertised we had a slightly greater attendance. Slowly the number rose, from eleven to thirteen, finally to seventeen, to twenty-three, to thirty-four listeners.
We raised funds out of our own pockets, and one day advertised the meeting in the Münchner Beobachter. Our success was amazing this time. It had been scheduled at the Munich Hofbrauhaus Keller—a tiny hall with a capacity of only 130 people. To me the room seemed gigantic and we all were afraid we could not fill it.
“I Could Speak!”
At seven o'clock 111 people were there, and the meeting was opened.
A Munich Professor delivered the principal address, and I was second on the program: my first public speech!
The chairman of the party at that time, Herr Harrer, thought this very hazardous; he was convinced that whatever else I might be able to do I could not speak. Even much later on he would not change his opinion!
I had been alotted twenty minutes; I spoke for thirty, and discovered what I had long suspected—I could speak. At the end of my speech the people in the room were electrified. This was proven in that my appeal for contributions was answered by 300 marks. This was of the greatest use to us.
National Chairman Harrer, the very first man to hold that position, was a journalist; but he was no speaker for the masses. Drexler, chairman of the Munich group, was a simple laborer; he too was no speaker, and moreover he was no soldier. Not even during the war had he served in the army, and his whole nature was weak and vacillating.
Neither man possessed natures which would have enabled him to hold a fanatical belief in the ultimate success of the movement. Nor was either the type who would savagely crush anyone standing in the way. For this, only one was suited whose spirit and body united these military virtues; fast as greyhounds, tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel.
I, myself, was still a soldier at that time. Six years had so shaped me that at first I suppose I seemed strange in this circle. I had forgotten the existence of such words as “one can’t do that,” “this won’t work out,” “we mustn’t venture that,” “it is too dangerous,” etc. The thing was dangerous. Bourgeois club meetings were safe enough, but in 1920 any nationalist meeting which tried to appeal to the masses was apt to be bloodily broken up by Communists in many parts of Germany. Our aim to win the masses who were in the services of the Marxist Jews and the Stock Exchange was of course hateful to the betrayers of the people, to whom the mere name “German Workers’ Party” was provocative. An early battle with the Marxists was inevitable.
In the inner circle of the movement this occasioned some alarm—for it was easy to vision the first large meeting being broken up, and the movement thus smashed. I had to fight hard for my view that we must not try to evade this trouble, but instead should go and meet it—first arming ourselves. Terrorism is not broken by mind, but by terrorism.
The success of the first meeting lead to a second one. Four gentlemen spoke about the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles. I spoke for an hour, with greater success than before. More than one hundred and thirty were present, and some troublemakers who tried to create a row were thrown downstairs with broken heads by my comrades.
Two weeks later there was still another meeting—with more than one hundred and seventy in attendance. I spoke again, with still greater success.
“I Was Right…”
I now pointed out that we needed a larger hall, and finally we obtained one at the other end of the city, in the Deutsches Reich, in the Dachauer Strasse. The first meeting attracted only 140 people, and the eternal doubters began to quibble about the advisability of holding so many meetings. There were violent arguments. I maintained that a city of 700,000 people could stand not simply one meeting every second week—but ten meetings every week.
The next meeting, held in the same hall again, proved I was right. More than two hundred people were there and much money was taken in.
Two weeks later more than 400 people showed up at this meeting.
The winter of 1919-20 was one long battle to strengthen the movement, and to raise it to that fanaticism which can move mountains.
Now the inner organization of the movement began to take place, and there were foolish arguments over such things as to whether it should be called a party—of course it was a party—and about slogans, etc.
A definite program was established, and the word “folkish” was carefully avoided, bearing as it did the taint of its use by weak-willed bourgeois “nationalists” who went about drivelling of stone axes and spears, and thought that they were thus building the glory of the race.
The idea contained in the word “folkish” is too limitless to form a solid foundation for a movement—it offers room for too wide interpretation. Such a vague conception doesn’t belong in a political battle, for it weakens unity, and it must never be left to the individual to define his faith and his will.
We took the word “party” in order to frighten off “nationalists” of the insipid type; we called ourselves the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”
The first expression—“National Socialist”—drove off the antiquity lovers, while “German Workers’ Party”—eliminated the cowards that want only to use the “intellectual” sword, whatever that is.
First Nazi Mass Meeting
At the first of 1920 I urged that we stage our first great mass meeting. Some thought this premature. The red press was beginning to occupy itself with us, and this made us happy. We had begun to enter discussion periods in other meetings, which of course, created real trouble each time, but which slowly made us known. We hoped that our first great meeting would in the same way attract visitors from the red camp.
Harrer could not agree with me that the time was ripe for a mass meeting, so, as an honest man, be withdrew from the leadership of the movement. Anton Drexler replaced him. I reserved propaganda to myself, and now I savagely carried it out.
The date of the first mass meeting was set for February 24, 1920.
​I personally led the preparations. Everything was aimed at the creation of ability to make rapid decisions. We wanted to outline our stands upon current events on twenty-four hour notice. Announcements of mass meetings concerned with national doings were to be made in posters and leaflets concentrating on influencing the masses through perpetual repetition of a few points.
We deliberately chose red as the color, for it is the most inflammatory, and was sure to outrage our enemies. Before we held the first mass meeting, it was necessary, in addition to formulating propaganda, to set down in print the leading articles of the program. This was done to give the movement form and substance, and to make its aims clear to the masses.
I saw in those years dozens of new movements arise but they have all withered away. One alone has survived: The National Socialist German Workers Party. To-day more than ever I believe that it can be fought, that attempts may be made to terrorize it, that petty ministers may prohibit us from writing and taking, but that victory of our ideas cannot be prevented.
The foundations of the Nazi program are the basis of the coming state.
At the time of the first great mass meeting I had one great anxiety—will the hall be filled? I believed that if a crowd appeared, the meeting would mean a tremendous lot to the success of the party.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 7:30 in the evening. At 7:10 I entered the banquet hall of the Hofbrauhaus at the Platzl in Munich—and my heart almost burst with joy. The great hall—it seemed great to me then—was filled with a great mass of people—shoulder to shoulder—almost 2,000 of them. Above all, those whom we had wanted to reach had come. Half of the hall was filled with Communists and Independents. They had decided upon a quick end for our first great demonstration.
It was second on the program, and soon after I began to speak, there was shouting and then some fighting in the hall—peace was restored and I continued. After half an hour applause began to be greater than the shouting.
Siegfried— And the Goddess of Revenge
I began, for the first time, to interpret the program. The interruptions were less and less. When finally, point by point, I gave the 25 points to the crowd, asking judgment upon each of them, one after another was accepted with more and more cheering, unanimously. When I finished I was faced by a hall full of poeple united by a new conviction, a new belief, a new will.
When, after almost four hours, the hall began to empty and the crowd went out, I knew that the principles of the movement marched out into the German people, never to be forgotten.
A fire had been kindled, and the flames would one day win back freedom for the Germanic Siegfried and the German nation.
I sensed that beside the coming revival there walked the Goddess of Revenge, seeking those guilty of the act of November 9th, 1918.
So the hall gradually emptied.
The movement took its course.