Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

'bad' leadership. The foe did not consist of cowards either; he, too, knew how to die. His
number from the first day was greater than that of the German army for he could draw on
the technical armament and the arsenals of the whole world; hence the German victories,
won for four years against a whole world, must regardless of all heroic courage and
'organization,' be attributed solely to superior leadership, and this iS a fact which cannot be
denied out of existence. The organization and leadership of the German army were the
mightiest that the earth had ever seen. Their deficiencies lay in the limits of all human
adequacy in general.
The collapse of this army was not the cause of our present-day misfortune, but only the
consequence of other crimes, a consequence which itself again, it must be admitted, ushered
in the beginning of a further and this time visible collapse.
The truth of this can be seen from the following:
Must a military defeat lead to so complete a collapse of a nation and a state? Since when is
this the result of an unfortunate war? Do peoples perish in consequence of lost wars as
such?
The answer to this can be very brief: always, when military defeat iS the payment meted out
to peoples for their inner rottenness, cowardice, lack of character, in short, unworthiness. If
this iS not the case, the military defeat will rather be the inspiration of a great future
resurrection than the tombstone of a national existence.
History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this assertion.
Unfortunately, the military defeat of the German people is not an undeserved catastrophe,
but the deserved chastisement of eternal retribution. We more than deserved this defeat. It is
only the greatest outward symptom of decay amid a whole series of inner symptoms, which
perhaps had remained hidden and invisible to the eyes of most people, or which like
ostriches people did not want to see.
Just consider the attendant circumstances amid which the German people accepted this
defeat. Didn't many circles express the most shameless joy at the misfortune of the
fatherland? And who would do such a thing if he does not really deserve such a punishment?
Why, didn't they go even further and brag of having finally caused the front to waver? And it
was not the enemy that did this-no, no, it was Germans who poured such disgrace upon
their heads! Can it be said that misfortune struck them unjustly? Since when do people step
forward and take the guilt for a war on themselves? And against better knowledge and better
judgment!
No, and again no. In the way in which the German people received its defeat, we can
recognize most clearly that the true cause of our collapse must be sought in an entirely
different place from the purely military loss of a few positions or in the failure of an offensive;
for if the front as such had really flagged and if its downfall had really encompassed the
doom of the fatherland, the German people would have received the defeat quite differently.
Then they would have borne the ensuing misfortune with gritted teeth or would have
mourned it, overpowered by grief; then all hearts would have been filled with rage and anger
toward the enemy who had become victorious through a trick of chance or the will of fate;
then, like the Roman Senate, the nation would have received the defeated divisions with the
thanks of the fatherland for the sacrifices they had made and besought them not to despair
of the Reich. The capitulation would have been signed only with the reason, while the heart
even then would have beaten for the resurrection to come.
This is how a defeat for which only fate was responsible would have been received. Then
people would not have laughed and danced, they would not have boasted of cowardice and
glorified the defeat, they would not have scoffed at the embattled troops and dragged their
banner and cockade in the mud. But above all: then we should never have had the terrible
state of affairs which prompted a British officer, Colonel Repington, to make the
contemptuous statement: 'Of the Germans, every third man is a traitor.' No, this plague