Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

would never have been able to rise into the stifling flood which for five years now has been
drowning the very last remnant of respect for us on the part of the rest of the world.
This most of all shows the assertion that the lost War was the cause of the German collapse
to be a lie. No, this military collapse was itself only the consequence of a large number of
symptoms of disease and their causes, which even in peacetime were with the German
nation. This was the first consequence, catastrophic and visible to all, of an ethical and
moral poisoning, of a diminution in the instinct of self-preservation and its preconditions,
which for many years had begun to undermine the foundations of the people and the Reich.
It required the whole bottomless falsehood of the Jews and their Marxist fighting organization
to lay the blame for the collapse on that very man who alone, with superhuman energy and
will power, tried to prevent the catastrophe he foresaw and save the nation from its time of
deepest humiliation and disgrace By branding Ludendorff as guilty for the loss of the World
War they took the weapon of moral right from the one dangerous accuser who could have
risen against the traitors to the fatherland. In this they proceeded on the sound principle
that the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great
masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than
consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their
minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie
in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never
enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous
effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the
subject, they will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes
as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain and stick-a fact
which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this world know only too well and also make
the most treacherous use of.
The foremost connoisseurs of this truth regarding the possibilities in the use of falsehood
and slander have always been the Jews; for after all, their whole existence is based on one
single great lie, to wit, that they are a religious community while actually they are a race-and
what a race ! One of the greatest minds of humanity has nailed them forever as such in an
eternally correct phrase of fundamental truth: he called them 'the great masters of the lie.'
And anyone who does not recognize this or does not want to believe it will never in this world
be able to help the truth to victory.
For the German people it must almost be considered a great good fortune that its period of
creeping sickness was suddenly cut short by so terrible a catastrophe, for otherwise the
nation would have gone to the dogs more slowly perhaps, but all the more certainly. The
disease would have become chronic, while in the acute form of the collapse it at least became
clearly and distinctly recognizable to a considerable number of people. It was no accident
that man mastered the plague more easily than tuberculosis. The one comes in terrible
waves of death that shake humanity to the foundations, the other slowly and stealthily; the
one leads to terrible fear, the other to gradual indifference. The consequence is that man
opposed the one with all the ruthlessness of his energy, while he tries to control consumption
with feeble means. Thus he mastered the plague, while tuberculosis masters him.
Exactly the same is true of diseases of national bodies. If they do not take the form of
catastrophe, man slowly begins to get accustomed to them and at length, though it may take
some time, perishes all the more certainly of them. And so it is a good fortune-though a bitter
one, to be sure-when Fate resolves to take a hand in this slow process of putrefaction and
with a sudden blow makes the victim visualize the end of his disease. For more than once,
that is what such a catastrophe amounts to Then it can easily become the cause of a
recovery beginning with the utmost determination.
But even in such a case, the prerequisite is again the recognition of the inner grounds which
cause the disease in question.