Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Here, too, the most important thing remains the distinction between the causes and the
conditions they call forth. This will be all the more difficult, the longer the toxins remain in
the national body and the more they become an ingredient of it which is taken for granted.
For it is easily possible that after a certain time unquestionably harmful poisons Bill be
regarded as an ingredient of one's own nation or at best will be tolerated as a necessary evil,
so that a search for the alien virus is no longer regarded as necessary.
Thus, in the long peace of the pre-War years, certain harmful features had appeared and
been recognized as such, though next to nothing was done against their virus, aside from a
few exceptions. And here again these exceptions were primarily manifestations of economic
life, which struck the consciousness of the individual more strongly than the harmful
features in a number of other fields.
There were many symptoms of decay which should have aroused serious reflection.
With respect to economics, the following should be said:
Through the amazing increase in the German population before the War, the question of
providing the necessary daily bread stepped more and more sharply into the foreground of all
political and economic thought and action. Unfortunately, those in power could not make up
their minds to choose the only correct solution, but thought they could reach their goal in an
easier way. When they renounced the acquisition of new soil and replaced it by the lunacy of
world economic conquest, the result was bound to be an industrialization as boundless as it
was harmful.
The first consequence of gravest importance was the weakening of the peasant class.
Proportionately as the peasant class diminished, the mass of the big city proletariat
increased more and more, until finally the balance was completely upset.
Now the abrupt alternation between rich and poor became really apparent. Abundance and
poverty lived so close together that the saddest consequences could and inevitably did arise.
Poverty and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with people, leaving behind them a
memory of discontent and embitterment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class
division. Despite all the economic prosperity, dissatisfaction became greater and deeper; in
fact, things came to such a pass that the conviction that 'it can't go on like this much longer'
became general, yet without people having or being able to have any definite idea of what
ought to have been done.
These were the typical symptoms of deep discontent which sought to express themselves in
this way.
But worse than this were other consequences induced by the economization of the nation.
In proportion as economic life grew to be the dominant mistress of the state, money became
the god whom all had to serve and to whom each man had to bow down. More and more, the
gods of heaven were put into the corner as obsolete and outmoded, and in their stead
incense was burned to the idol Mammon. A truly malignant degeneration set in; what made it
most malignant was that it began at a time when the nation, in a presumably menacing and
critical hour, needed the highest heroic attitude. Germany had to accustom herself to the
idea that some day her attempt to secure her daily bread by means of 'peaceful economic
labor' would have to be defended by the sword.
Unfortunately, the domination of money was sanctioned even by that authority which should
have most opposed it: His Majesty the Kaiser acted most unfortunately by drawing the
aristocracy into the orbit of the new finance capital. It must be said to his credit, however,
that unfortunately even Bismarck himself did not recognize the menacing danger in this
respect. Thereby the ideal virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position second to
the value of money, for it was clear that once a beginning had been made in this direction,