Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

of our education in the upper classes makes them incapable of defending themselves, let
alone enforcing their will. Not infrequently the first reason for personal cowardice lies in
physical weaknesses.
The excessive emphasis on purely intellectual instruction and the neglect of physical training
also encourage the emergence of sexual ideas at a much too early age. The youth who
achieves the hardness of iron by sports and gymnastics succumbs to the need of sexual
satisfaction less than the stay-at-home fed exclusively on intellectual fare. And a sensible
system of education must bear this in mind. It must, moreover, not fail to consider that the
healthy young man will expect different things from the woman than a prematurely
corrupted weakling.
Thus, the whole system of education must be so organized as to use the boy's free time for
the useful training of his body. He has no right to hang about in idleness during these years,
to make the streets and movie-houses unsafe; after his day's work he should steel and
harden his young body, so that later life will not find him too soft. To begin this and also
carry it out, to direct and guide it, is the task of education, and not just the pumping of socalled
wisdom. We must also do away with the conception that the treatment of the body is
the affair of every individual. There is no freedom to sin at the cost of posterity and hence of
the race.
Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin.
Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and stimulations. Just look at
the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able
to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. In shop windows and
billboards the vilest means are used to attract the attention of the crowd. Anyone who has
not lost the ability to think himself into their soul must realize that this must cause great
damage in the youth. This sensual, sultry atmosphere leads to ideas and stimulations at a
time when the boy should have no understanding of such things. The result of this kind of
education can be studied in present-day youth, and it is not exactly gratifying. They mature
too early and consequently grow old before their time. Sometimes the public learns of court
proceedings which permit shattering insights into the emotional life of our fourteen- and
fifteen-year-olds. Who will be surprised that even in these age-groups syphilis begins to seek
its victims? And is it not deplorable to see a good number of these physically weak,
spiritually corrupted young men obtaining their introduction to marriage through big-city
whores?
No, anyone who wants to attack prostitution must first of all help to eliminate its spiritual
basis. He must clear away the filth of the moral plague of big-city ' civilization ' and he must
do this ruthlessly and without wavering in the face of all the shouting and screaming that
will naturally be let loose. If we do not lift the youth out of the morass of their present-day
environment, they will drown in it. Anyone who refuses to see these things supports them,
and thereby makes himself an accomplice in the slow prostitution of our future which,
whether we like it or not, lies in the coming generation. This cleansing of our culture must be
extended to nearly all fields. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window
displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service
of a moral political, and cultural idea. Public life must be freed from the stifling perfume of
our modern eroticism, just as it must be freed from all unmanly, prudish hypocrisy. In all
these things the goal and the road must be determined by concern for the preservation of the
health of our people in body and soul. The right of personal freedom recedes before the duty
to preserve the race.
Only after these measures are carried out can the medical struggle against the plague itself
be carried through with any prospect of success. But here, too, there must be no halfmeasures;
the gravest and most ruthless decisions will have to be made. It is a half-measure
to let incurably sick people steadily contaminate the remaining healthy ones. This is in
keeping with the humanitarianism which, to avoid hurting one individual, lets a hundred