Mein Kampf by Adolf
Hitler
Chapter VIII: The Strong Man is Mightiest Alone
We post this chapter because it is imitated by
all successful efforts to break down old institutions or burn down
all societies and rebuild on the ash heap the new keepers of the
flame newly lit. Again, we would suggest that focussing upon milita
movements may be a misdirection away from people flying the flag of
tolerance and brotherhood wanting to take over the church or
world. As you read you might recognize someone you
have met.
IN THE ABOVE I have already mentioned the
existence of a Working Federation of German Folkish Associations and
in this place would like to discuss very briefly the problem of these
working federations. 1 [Reference to title, "The Strong Man is Mightiest
Alone] Familiar quotation from
Schiller's Wilhelm Tell Act I, Scene III. In general we understand by a working
federation a group of associations which for the facilitation of their work
enter into a certain mutual relationship, choose a common leadership
of greater or lesser competence, and proceed to carry out common
actions. From this alone it results that we must be
dealing with clubs, associations, or parties whose aims and methods
do not lie too far apart. It is claimed that this is always the case.
For the usual average citizen it is
equally pleasant and comforting to hear that such associations,
by combining in such a 'working
federation,' have discovered a 'common bond ' and 'set aside all dividing
factors.' Here the general
conviction prevails that such a
unification brings an enormous increase in
strength, and that the otherwise weak little groups have thereby
suddenly become a power. This, however, is usually
false. It is interesting and in my eyes important for
the better understanding of this question to attain clarity as to how
associations. clubs, and the like can arise which all claim to pursue
the same goal. In the nature of things, it would
after all be logical that one goal should be advocated
by only one association, and that, reasonably speaking, several associations
should not pursue the same goal. Without doubt that goal had first
been envisaged by one association. One man
somewhere proclaims a truth and forms a movement which is intended to
serve the realization of his purpose. Thus, an association or a party is founded
which, according to its program, should either bring about the
elimination of existing evils or the achievement of a particular
state of affairs in the future. Once such a movement has been called to life,
it possesses a certain practical
right of priority. It should really be obvious that men who mean
to fight for the same goal should join into such a movement and
thereby add to its strength, thus better to serve the common purpose.
Especially every active mind must feel that the premise for any real
success in the common struggle lies in such a coordination.
Therefore, reasonably, and presupposing a
certain honesty (much depends on this, as I shall later demonstrate),
there should be only one
movement for one goal. That this is not the case can be attributed to two causes. One of these I might designate as almost tragic, The tragic reason why in the solution of a
single task we usually do not content ourselves with a single
association is the following: Every deed in the grand manner on
this earth will in general be the fulfillment of a desire
which had long since been present in
millions of people, a longing silently
harbored by many. Yes, it can come about that centuries wish and
yearn for the solution of a certain question, because they are
sighing
beneath the intolerable burden of an existing condition and the
fulfillment of this general longing does not materialize.
Nations which no longer find
any heroic solution for such distress can be designated as impotent, while we see the
vitality of a people, and the predestination for life guaranteed by
this vitality, most strikingly demonstrated when, for a people's
liberation from a great oppression, or for the elimination of a
bitter distress, or for the satisfaction of its soul, restless
because it has grown insecure - Fate some day bestows upon it the
man endowed for this purpose, who finally brings the long yearned-for
fulfillment. Now it lies entirely in the essence of
so-called great questions of the day that thousands are active in
their solution, that many feel called, indeed, that Fate itself puts
forward many for selection, and then ultimately, in the free play of
forces, gives victory to the stronger and more competent, entrusting
him with the solution of the problem. Thus, it may be that centuries, dissatisfied
with the form of their religious
life, yearn for a renewal, and that from this psychic urge
dozens and
more men arise who on the basis of their insight and their knowledge
believe themselves chosen to solve this religious distress,
to manifest themselves as prophets of a new
doctrine, or at least as warriors
against an existing one. Here, too, assuredly, by virtue of
a natural order, the strongest
man is destined to fulfill the great
mission; yet the realization that this one is the exclusively elect usually
comes to the others very late. On the contrary, they all see themselves as chosen and having equal
rights for the solution of the task,
and their fellow men are usually able least of all to distinguish
which among them - being solely endowed with the highest ability -
deserves their sole support. Thus, in the course of centuries, often indeed
within the same period, different
men appear and found movements to fight
for goals which, allegedly at least, are the same or at least are
felt to be the same by the great masses. The common people themselves harbor
indefinite desires and have general convictions, but cannot obtain
precise clarity regarding the actual nature of their aim or of
their own desire, let alone the possibility of its fulfillment.
The tragedy lies in the fact that these men
strive for the same goal in entirely different ways, without knowing
one another. and hence, with the highest faith in their own mission,
consider themselves obligated to go their own ways without consideration
for others. The fact that such movements, parties,
religious groups, arise entirely independent of one another, solely
from the general will of the times to act in the same direction, is what, at
least at first sight, seems tragic, because people incline too much to
the opinion that the forces scattered among the different ways,
could, if concentrated upon a single one, lead more quickly and
surely to success. This, however, is not the case. For Nature itself in
its inexorable logic makes the decision, by causing the different
groups to enter into competition with
one another and struggle for the
palm of
victory, and leads that movement to the goal
which has chosen the clearest, shortest, and surest way. But how should the correctness or incorrectness
of a road be determined from outside unless free course is given to
the play of forces, unless the ultimate decision is withdrawn from the doctrinaire opinion of human know-it-alls and
entrusted to the infallible logic of
visible success, And so if different groups march toward the
same goal on separate paths, once they have become aware of the
existence of similar efforts, they will more thoroughly examine the
nature of their own way; where possible they will shorten it,
and by stretching their energy to
the utmost will strive to reach the goal more quickly. This competition helps to
cultivate the individual
fighter, and mankind often owes its
successes in part to the doctrines that have been derived from the
ill fate of previous unsuccessful
efforts. And so, in the fact of an incipient scattering
of forces, which arose through no conscious fault of individuals and
at first sight seemed tragic, we can recognize the means through
which in the end the best method was achieved. We see in history that in the opinion of most
people the two roads which it was once possible to take for the
solution of the German question and whose chief representatives and
champions were Austria and Prussia, Habsburg and Hohenzollern, should
have been joined together from the start; in their view, people
should have entrusted themselves with united strength to the one or
the other road. And then the road of the representative who in the
end proved more significant would have been taken; the Austrian
intention, however, would never have led to a German Reich.
And then the Reich of strongest German unity
arose from the very thing which millions of Germans with
bleeding heart felt to be the ultimate and most terrible sign of our
fratricidal quarrel: the German imperial throne was in truth won on
the field of Koniggrotz and not in the battles outside Paris as
people afterwards came to think. And thus the founding of the German Reich as
such was not the result of any common
will along common paths, but the result
of a conscious and sometimes unconscious struggle for hegemony, from which
struggle Prussia ultimately issued victorious. And anyone who is not blinded by party politics
into renouncing the truth, will have to confirm that so-called human
wisdom would never have made the same wise decision which the wisdom
of life, that is, the free play of
forces, finally turned into reality.
For who in German territories two hundred years
ago would seriously have believed that the Prussia of the
Hohenzollerns would some day become the germ cell, founder, and
mentor of
the new German Reich, and not the Habsburgs? And who, on the other
hand, would deny today that Destiny acted more wisely in this
respect; in fact, who today could even conceive of a German Reich
based on the principles of a rotten and degenerate dynasty?
No, the natural development, though
after a struggle enduring centuries, finally brought the
best man
to the place where he belonged. This will always be so and will eternally
remain so, as it always has been so. Therefore, it must not be lamented if so many
men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will
in this way be recognized, and will be the victor. Now there is a second reason why often in
the life of nations movements of apparently the same nature
nevertheless try to reach the same goal in different ways. This cause
not only is not tragic, but is positively miserable. It lies in the sorry mixture of
envy; jealousy, ambition, and thievish
mentality which unfortunately we
sometimes find combined in individual specimens of mankind.
For as soon as a
man appears who profoundly recognizes
the distress of his people and then, after he has attained the
ultimate clarity with regard to the nature of the disease, seriously
tries to cure it, when he has set a goal and chosen
the road that can lead to this goal - immediately small and
petty minds take notice and begin to follow eagerly the activity of
this man who has attracted the public eye. These people are just like sparrows who, apparently
uninterested, but in reality most attentive, keep watching a more
fortunate comrade who has found a piece of bread, in hopes of
suddenly robbing him in an unguarded moment. A man need only embark upon a new road and all
sorts of lazy loiterers prick up their ears and sniff some worth-while morsel
which might lie at the end of this road. Then, as soon as they have
found out where it may
be, they eagerly start out in order to
reach the goal by some other road, if possible a
shorter one. So if a new movement has been founded and has
received its definite program, those people come and claim to be
fighting for the same goal; but, rest assured, not by honestly joining
the ranks of such a movement and thus recognizing its priority; no,
they steal
the program and base a new party of their own upon it. With all this, they are shameless enough to
assure their thoughtless fellow men that they had desired the same as
the other movement long before, and not seldom they thus succeed in
placing themselves in a favorable light, instead of winning universal
contempt as they deserve. For is it not a tremendous gall to aspire to
write on their own banner the task that another has written on his, to
borrow his
programmatical principles, and then, as though he had created all
this, to go his own ways? And the
gall is especially manifested in the fact
that the same
elements who have caused
the split by founding
their new movements do the most talking
as experience shows, about the need of
unification and unity
as soon as they think
they have observed that the opponent has too much of a headstart to be
overtaken. The so-called 'folkish splintering' is
due to such a process. To be sure, the foundation in 1918-19 of a
considerable number of groups, parties, etc., designated as folkish,
occurred through the natural development of things through no fault
of the founders. From all these the NSDAP had slowly crystallized out
as the victor by 1920. The basic honesty of those individual founders
could be proved by nothing more splendidly than by the truly
admirable decision taken by many to sacrifice their own obviously
less successful movements to the stronger one; that is, to disband
them or fuse them
unconditionally. This applies especially to the chief fighter of
the German-Socialist Party (Deutsch-Sozialistische Partei) of those
days in Nuremberg, Julius Streicher. Note 2 The
NSDAP and the DSP had arisen with the same ultimate aims, yet
absolutely independently of one another. The main fighter for the
DSP, as I have said, was Julius Streicher, then a teacher in
Nuremberg. At first he, too, had a holy conviction of the
mission and the future of his movement. But as soon as he could
recognize the greater power and superior growth of the NSDAP clearly
and beyond all doubt, he ceased his activity for the DSP and the
Working Federation, and called on his adherents to join the NSDAP,
which had issued victoriously from the mutual struggle, and to fight
on in its ranks for the common goal. A decision as grave from the
personal point of view as it was profoundly decent. And no form of split has remained from this
first period of the movement; the honorable intention of the men of
those days led almost entirely to an honorable, straight, and correct
conclusion. Note 2 Julius
Streicher, Gauleiter of Nuremberg and publisher of the anti-Semitic
paper Der St¸rmer, devoted chiefly to pornographic exposures of sexual relations between
Jews and Aryans, retained until the Second War a local independence
enjoyed by no other party leader. His fusion with Hitler was not as
peaceable as Hitler makes it. In 1921, Streicher tried to
wrest the party leadership from Hitler, but failed because of a
revolt in the ranks of his own Nuremberg supporters. What we designate today as 'folkish
splintering' owes its existence, as we have already emphasized,
exclusively to the second of the two causes I have cited: ambitious
men who previously had no ideas, much less goals of their own, felt
themselves 'called' at the very moment in which they saw the success
of the NSDAP undeniably maturing. Suddenly programs arose which from start to
finish were copied from ours, ideas were put forward which had been
borrowed from us, aims set up for which we had fought for years,
roads chosen which the NSDAP had long traveled. By every possible
means they sought to explain why they had been forced to found these
movements despite the NSDAP which had long been in existence; but the
nobler the alleged motives, the falser were their phrases.
In truth a single reason had been determining:
the personal ambition of the founders to play a role to which their
own dwarfish figure really brought nothing except a great boldness in
taking over the ideas of others, a boldness which elsewhere in civil
life is ordinarily designated as crooked. There was no conception or idea belonging to
other people, which one of these political kleptomaniacs
did not rapidly collect for his own business. And those who did this
were the same people who later with tears in their eyes profoundly
bemoaned the 'folkish splintering' and spoke incessantly of the 'need
for unity,' in the secret hope that in the end they would so outwit
the others that, weary of the eternal accusing clamor, they would, in
addition to the stolen ideas, toss the movements created for their
execution to the thieves. But if this proved unsuccessful, and if, thanks
to the small intellectual dimensions of their owners, the new
enterprises did not prove as profitable as they had hoped,
they usually reduced their
prices and considered themselves happy
if they could land in
one of the so-called working
federations. Everyone who at that time
could not stand on his own
feet joined in such working
federations; no doubt proceeding from the belief that eight cripples
joining arms are sure to produce one gladiator. And if there were really one healthy man among
the cripples, he used up all his strength just to keep the others on
their feet, and in this way was himself
crippled. We have always regarded fusion in so-called
working federations as a question of tactics; but in this we must
never depart from the following basic realization: By the formation of a working federation weak
organizations are never transformed into strong ones, but a strong organization can and will not seldom be
weakened. The opinion that a power factor
must result from an association of weak groups is incorrect,
since the majority in any form whatsoever and
under all presuppositions will, as experience shows, be the representative of stupidity
and cowardice, and therefore any multiplicity of
organizations, as soon as it is directed by a self-chosen multiple leadership, is sacrificed to cowardice and weakness. Also, by such a fusion, the free play of forces
is thwarted, the struggle for the selection of the best is stopped, and hence the necessary and ultimate victory of the
healthier and stronger prevented forever. Therefore, such
fusions are enemies of natural development, for usually they hinder the solution of the problem
being fought for, far more than they advance it. It can occur that from purely tactical
considerations the top leadership of a movement which looks into the
future nevertheless enters into an agreement with such
associations for a short time as regards the treatment of definite
questions and perhaps undertakes steps in common. But this must never lead to the perpetuation of
such a state of affairs, unless the movement itself wants to renounce
its redeeming mission. For once it has become definitely involved in
such a union, it loses the possibility and also
the right of letting its own strength work itself out to the full
and thus overcome its rivals and victoriously
achieve the goal it has set itself. It must never be forgotten that nothing that is
really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions but
that it has always been the success of a single victor.
Coalition successes bear by the very nature of
their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has
already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a
spiritual
nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic
struggles of individual formations, never as
enterprises of coalitions. And thus the folkish state above all will never
be created by the compromising will of a folkish working federation,
but solely by the iron will of a single
movement that has fought its way to the top against
all. Index of chapters on Change Agenda
while the second is miserable and to be sought in human weakness itself.
But most fundamentally, I see in both only facts which are suited to
enhancing the will as such, its energy and intensity, and, through
this higher cultivation of human energy, ultimately to make possible
a solution of the problem in question.
which in the end will always render the
ultimate confirmation of an action's
correctness!
