Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Chapter VIII: The Beginning of My Political Activity
AT THE END of November, 1918, I returned to Munich. Again I went to the replacement
battalion of my regiment, which was in the hands of 'soldiers' councils.' Their whole activity
was so repellent to me that I decided at once to leave again as soon as possible. With
Schmiedt Ernst, a faithful war comrade, I went to Traunstein and remained there till the
camp was broken up.
In March, 1919, we went back to Munich.
The situation was untenable and moved inevitably toward a further continuation of the
revolution. Eisner's death only hastened the development and finally led to a dictatorship of
the Councils, or, better expressed, to a passing rule of the Jews, as had been the original aim
of the instigators of the whole revolution.
At this time endless plans chased one another through my head. For days I wondered what
could be done, but the end of every meditation was the sober realization that I, nameless as I
was, did not possess the least basis for any useful action. I shall come back to speak of the
reasons why then, as before, I could not decide to join any of the existing parties.
In the course of the new revolution of the Councils I for the first time acted in such a way as
to arouse the disapproval of the Central Council. Early in the morning of April 27, 1919, I
was to be arrested, but, faced with my leveled carbine, the three scoundrels lacked the
necessary courage and marched off as they had come.
A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered to report to the examining
commission concerned with revolutionary occurrences in the Second Infantry Regiment.
This was my first more or less purely political activity.
Only a few weeks afterward I received orders to attend a ' course ' that was held for members
of the armed forces. In it the soldier was supposed to learn certain fundamentals of civic
thinking. For me the value of the whole affair was that I now obtained an opportunity of
fleeting a few like-minded comrades with whom I could thoroughly discuss the situation of
the moment. All of us were more or less firmly convinced that Germany could no longer be
saved from the impending collapse by the parties of the November crime, the Center and the
Social Democracy, and that the so-called 'bourgeois-national' formations, even with the best
of intentions, could never repair what had happened. A whole series of preconditions were
lacking, without which such a task simply could not succeed. The following period confirmed
the opinion we then held. Thus, in our own circle we discussed the foundation of a new
party. The basic ideas which we had in mind were the same as those later realized in the '
German Workers' Party.' The name of the movement to be founded would from the very
beginning have to offer the possibility of approaching the broad masses; for without this
quality the whole task seemed aimless and superfluous. Thus we arrived at the name of '
Social Revolutionary Party'; this because the social views of the new organization did indeed
mean a revolution.
But the deeper ground for this lay in the following: however much I had concerned myself
with economic questions at an earlier day, my efforts had remained more or less within the
limits resulting from the contemplation of social questions as such. Only later did this
framework broaden through examination of the German alliance policy. This in very great
part was the outcome of a false estimation of economics as well as unclarity concerning the
possible basis for sustaining the German people in the future. But all these ideas were based
on the opinion that capital in any case was solely the result of labor and, therefore, like itself
was subject to the correction of all those factors which can either advance or thwart human
activity; and the national importance of capital was that it depended so completely on the