Mein Kampf - a philosophical introduction to what became the Nazi fascist Third Reich under Hitler.

Mein Kampf contains three axioms fundamental to racist thought. The first is the claim that only those living things which produce healthy offspring with one another constitute a race. Secondly, Hitler presupposes the existence of “higher and “lesser” races. Hitler claimed that the “Aryans” alone were the “culture creating race”. The “Jewish race” was the embodiment of evil. The third axiom was that among humans as well as animals there was and should be, an “urge towards racial purity”. Interbreeding between the races would result in “bastardization” and a deterioration of racial “value”. Hitler thus promoted the idea of racial selective breeding. In this he was clearly indebted to the ideas of racial hygienicists. None of Hitler’s ideas laid out in Mein Kampf were original, what was unique however, was his emphasis on action for its own sake, action that was nihilistic in its self emphasis. Furthermore, Hitler was convinced that the Nazi party was the heaven sent vehicle for the realization of the ideals of Mein Kampf.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler made no secret of his objectives. He advocated the acquisition of “outlying colonies” which were to be settled by bearers of the “highest racial purity”. This was the basis for his quest for “Lebensraum”.

Unlike other anti-Semites, Hitler made no distinctions between German and foreign, rich and poor, liberal, conservative, socialist, or Zionist, religious or non religious, baptized or un-baptized Jews. In his eyes there was only “the Jew”.

According to Hitler, the Jews in Germany and elsewhere were the champions of Marxism, the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. He also claimed that the democracy in Germany at the time was a bankrupt façade for communism.  Considering the “satanic skill” displayed by Jewish “evil councilors”, Hitler wrote, “how could their unfortunate victims be blamed?” The Jewish politicians were masters of “dialectical perfidy”, their very mouths “distorted the truth”. Marxism was a Jewish device, a Jewish trap. “the more I come to know the Jew, the easier it was to excuse the workers.”

Hitler presented himself as a man who had seen, and who would prevent, not only the destruction of German life, but the destruction of life on earth, by “the Jew”. The dangers, as he saw them, concerned the racial integrity of the German people, and a deliberate assault on that integrity. Hitler was convinced that “the Jew systematically endeavors to lower the racial quality of a people by permanently adulterating the blood of the individuals who make up that people.”

Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) over and over again in his book. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the very title itself of Hitler's book ("My Struggle"), was influenced by Darwin's subtitle, "Struggle for Existence," and by the German advocate of evolution, Ernst Haeckel, who published a book, in 1905, entitled, Der Kampf um den Entwicklungs-Gedanken ("The Struggle over Evolutionary Thinking"). Mein Kampf was also a firm advocate of the "science" of eugenics -- a concept popularized in the late 19th century, first in England and later in America. Eugenics was the belief that human beings were not of equal value, that some were inherently of better "stock" than others. Central to the dogma of eugenics was the theory that human characteristics such as honesty, diligence, moral integrity, intelligence, and the ability to acquire wealth were passed from one generation to another through the genes. In other words, upper class people, the "well bred" (to use the language of the times) would have children who would likewise grow up to be well-learned and prosperous. And under the same theory, the poor and the laboring classes could only produce children with their parents' "pauperism" in their genetic makeup.

What passed for "proof" of the theory eugenics was obvious: Wealth and privilege were indeed handed down from one generation to another -- and not because of biology, but because of a political arrangement that sustained a permanent nobility. And the poor, whose low wages and ill health deprived their children of hope and opportunity could likewise be interpreted as "evidence" that the tendency toward under-achievement likewise ran along family lines. As Hitler states in Mein Kampf, "True genius is always inborn and never cultivated, let alone learned." 

The false claim that social status and character were predetermined by biological inheritance opened the door to movements for "racial reform" -- policies designed to improve "the race" by encouraging higher fertility among those of "good" breeding while actively attempting to suppress the birth rate of the less-fortunate.

It began with the sterilization of those considered "unfit" to reproduce. Before long, children born with mild defects (often curable) were put to death. Once begun, the German eugenics program became a roller coaster ride that reached for anything politically unpopular that stood in the way of the emerging fascist state.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke of "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape" and lamented the fact of Christians going to "Central Africa" to set up "Negro missions," resulting in the turning of "healthy . . . human beings into a rotten brood of bastards." In his chapter entitled "Nation and Race," he said, "The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he, after all, is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development (Hoherentwicklung) of organic living beings would be unthinkable." A few pages later, he said, "Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."

It is worth noting that German racial ideologies propounded the view that Africans and Asians were of “lesser racial value” at a time when the German States possessed no colonies, nor had any desire to do so.

In Mein Kampf Hitler outlined his mission: to expose, and then to destroy the threat posed by a worldwide Jewish effort to destroy the foundations of the “Aryan” life. “Was there any shady undertaking,” he asked, “any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Jew did not participate?” and he went on to answer his question in these words: “on putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden light.”

Germany could only become a great nation again , Hitler argued, if it saw and repelled, the Jewish danger. Germany’s defeat in 1918 could have been prevented, but for “the will of a few Jews”: Traitors inside the German Reich. “There is no such thing,” Hitler concluded, “as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard and fast ‘Either-Or’.”

In his book, Hitler described the mission that inspired him, telling his readers:

“should the Jew, with the aid of his Marxist creed, triumph over the people of this world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of mankind, and this planet will once again follow its orbit through ether, without any human life on its surface, as it did millions of years ago. And so I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.”

 Mein Kampf sets forth Hitler's views on a very wide range of topics, Hitler being one of those individuals who felt able to expound on virtually any subject. In the context of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, the views he expressed in this book on Jews are especially important as his ultimate intentions towards them can only be inferred from publicly known statements, no written orders relating to their extermination having been found. Despite the fact that Mein Kampf has been dubbed "turgid, repetitious, wandering, illogical" and was a "rambling and badly written book which demonstrated that Hitler's gifts as an orator could not easily be turned  to literary purposes" it was an extremely important document because of its widespread appeal to certain sections of society in Germany and elsewhere. By 1939 it had been translated into eleven languages and had sold more than five million copies.

But there was little reason for anyone to heed such Hate mongering in the summer of 1925. The Weimar republic was scarcely halfway through its first decade, slowly establishing a democratic, parliamentary regime. The twin economic pressures of reconstruction and the payment of reparations to the allies were being lessened year by year. The crisis of whirlwind inflation had passed. Employment was slowly rising. International conferences offered Germany for the first time since her defeat, equal participation in European diplomacy.

On 10 December 1926 Hitler published the second volume of Mein Kampf. Once again, anti Jewish venom permeated its pages. “At the beginning of the war,” Hitler wrote, “or even during the war, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poisonous gas, just as hundreds and thousands of our best German workers from every social Stratum and from every trade and calling had to face it in the field, then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain.” On the contrary, Hitler continued, “if twelve thousand of these malefactors had been eliminated in proper time, probably the lives of a million decent men, who would be of value to Germany in the future, would have been saved.”

These were still the writings of an extremist with no prospect of political influence, let alone power. In 1926 his party’s membership stood at 17000. In may 1928, the Nazi Party participated in the German national elections, securing twelve seats in the Reichstag. European democracy did not seem to be endangered by such apparently minor developments. Germany, disarmed by the treaty of Versailles, posed no military threat to its neighbors. The Locarno agreement, signed with such high hopes, continued to serve as an apparent guarantee of stability. Germany’s remaining reparations payments were being rapidly reduced by negotiations. Suddenly, though, events began to change in favor of Hitler and his followers. Inflation began to rise again. Unemployment grew to unprecedented levels. The growth of German Communist support triggered a reaction on the right. Germany was plunged into a nightmare of depression and always of corrosive, embittered nationalism. Extremism replaced the Weimar democratic ideal.

It was during this period that Hitler’s hysterical and hypnotic oratory convinced hundreds of thousands of distraught German lower Mittelstand white collar workers, the class which was the principle victim of the economic crisis of the 1920’s that the Nazi party was the one dependable instrument of Germany’s salvation. As the economic distress grew, the Nazis denounced Jewish “wealth” and “conspiracy”. Massive Nazi torchlight parades, spectacular appeals to German nationalism, and status satisfying assaults on Jews and socialists exerted a mesmerizing influence on the German mass mind. Nazi political strength grew steadily. Eventually Fritz Thyssen and Emil Kirdoff, two of Germany’s wealthiest industrialists, determined to employ Hitler to throttle the communists; the iron and coal barons of the Ruhr readily joined them to contribute to the Nazi cause. They hoped to use Hitler as a tool to rid Germany of democracy and replace it with authoritarian rule. With this kind of rightist support, Nazi political success was incredibly rapid. In 1930 when the world depression forced hundreds of German banks and factories to close, the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag and became Germany’s second largest party. In Berlin on 1 January 1930, brown uniformed storm troopers killed eight Jews: the first Jewish victims of the Nazi era.

Yet Hitler’s assumption to power in 1933 was not the result of an irresistible revolutionary movement, nor even of a popular victory at the polls; the Nazi party lost 2 million votes in the 1932 election. Rather Hitler was “jobbed” into office by the backdoor. In January 1933 Chancellor Franz von Papen, alarmed at the inability of Germany’s “scrupulous” conservatives to deal with the “red menace”, persuaded the senile old president, field Marshal von Hindenburg, to offer the chancellorship to Hitler. Von Papen and the “respectable” rightists were convinced that they could control Hitler and use him as an instrument with which to terrorize the communists into submission. None of them had any doubts that Hitler would only be their puppet. This turned out to be one of the biggest misjudgments in European history.

Because they constituted a decided minority in the government, the Nazis at once set about winning a more effective popular mandate. Within five weeks of becoming chancellor, Hitler announced his plan for new elections. During the ensuing political campaign the communists, the social democrats and the centrists were subjected to systematic terrorization; their headquarters were raided, their leaders arrested, their newspapers and mass meetings forbidden altogether. Then on the eve of the election, the Reichstag was set on fire (apparently by a young Dutch communist acting alone). The Nazi government skillfully placed the blame on the idea of a communist conspiracy, and this ruse worked. The election of March 5, 1933, fear of “bolshevist incendiarism” gave the Nazis the majority they needed to implement their program. Hitler then appeared before the Reichstag and demanded dictatorial power for a period of four years. The Reichstag promptly agreed and rushed through an enabling act which concentrated all political power in the chancellor’s hands. The Nazis dissolved all other parties and the Reichstag was transformed into a rubber stamp. In 1934 President Hindenburg died, and thereafter no other president was elected. Hitler assumed dictatorial control as “Der Fuhrer”.

The Nazis proceeded to systematically destroy all traces of a labor organization in Germany, and to create a cartelized economy in which power was concentrated almost exclusively in the hands of the industrial oligarchy. Education was revolutionized and racist and totalitarian ideals were drummed endlessly into the minds of children. One by one the Nazis cast off the restrictions of the Versailles treaty: By announcing Germany’s right to Lebensraum, by rearming, by seizing the Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudetenland, and then the Nazi State made ready for its final act of aggression: The violent explosion into Eastern Europe which was to begin the second world war and the Holocaust.

Before the horrors of the Nazi regime had run their course, more than eleven million people were dead -- not casualties of the war, but deliberately hauled to concentration camps where they were starved, tortured, gassed, subjected to barbaric "scientific" experiments, and ultimately slaughtered. The dead included not only six million Jews, but Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals and Catholics, as well. Ultimately,  Mein Kampf was all about race. As the epilogue concludes, "A state which in this age of racial poisoning dedicates itself to the care of its best racial elements must some day become lord of the earth."

The fascist Nazi experiment in ruthless state power, racial hygiene, and expansionism, as history has proven, never brought about the longed-for status of "lord of the earth," but instead stands out in history as one of the most obscene regimes in human memory.

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