Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Let anyone who is inclined to take this lightly just study the basic statistical facts on the
dissemination of this plague, compare its growth in the last hundred years, and then imagine
its further development-and he would really need the simplicity of an ass to keep an
unpleasant shudder from running down his back.
The weakness and halfheartedness of the position taken in old Germany toward so terrible a
phenomenon may be evaluated as a visible sign of a people's decay. If the power to fight for
one's own health is no longer present, the right to live in this world of struggle ends. This
world belongs only to the forceful 'whole' man and not to the weak 'half ' man.
One of the most obvious manifestations of decay in the old Reich was the slow decline of the
cultural level, and by culture I do not mean what today is designated by the word '
civilization.' The latter, on the contrary, rather seems hostile to a truly high standard of
thinking and living.
Even before the turn of the century an element began to intrude into our art which up to that
time could be regarded as entirely foreign and unknown. To be sure, even in earlier times
there were occasional aberrations of taste, but such cases were rather artistic derailments, to
which posterity could attribute at least a certain historical value, than products no longer of
an artistic degeneration, but of a spiritual degeneration that had reached the point of
destroying the spirit. In them the political collapse, which later became more visible, was
culturally indicated.
Art Bolshevism is the only possible cultural form and spiritual expression of Bolshevism as a
whole.
Anyone to whom this seems strange need only subject the art of the happily Bolshevized
states to an examination, and, to his horror, he will be confronted by the morbid
excrescences of insane and degenerate men, with which, since the turn of the century, we
have become familiar under the collective concepts of cubism and dadaism, as the official
and recognized art of those states. Even in the short period of the Bavarian Republic of
Councils, this phenomenon appeared. Even here it could be seen that all the official posters,
propagandist drawings in the newspapers, etc., bore the imprint, not only of political but of
cultural decay.
No more than a political collapse of the present magnitude would have been conceivable sixty
years ago was a cultural collapse such as began to manifest itself in futurist and cubist
works since 1900 thinkable. Sixty years ago an exhibition of so-called dadaistic 'experiences'
would have seemed simply impossible and its organizers would have ended up in the
madhouse, while today they even preside over art associations. This plague could not appear
at that time, because neither would public opinion have tolerated it nor the state calmly
looked on. For it is the business of the state, in other words, of its leaders, to prevent a
people from being driven into the arms of spiritual madness. And this is where such a
development would some day inevitably end. For on the day when this type of art really
corresponded to the general view of things, one of the gravest transformations of humanity
would have occurred: the regressive development of the human mind would have begun and
the end would be scarcely conceivable.
Once we pass the development of our cultural life in the last twenty-five years in review from
this standpoint, we shall be horrified to see how far we are already engaged in this
regression. Everywhere we encounter seeds which represent the beginnings of parasitic
growths which must sooner or later be the ruin of our culture. In them, too, we can recognize
the symptoms of decay of a slowly rotting world. Woe to the peoples who can no longer
master this disease!
Such diseases could be seen in Germany in nearly every field of art and culture. Everything
seemed to have passed the high point and to be hastening toward the abyss. The theater was
sinking manifestly lower and even then would have disappeared completely as a cultural
factor if the Court Theaters at least had not turned against the prostitution of art. If we
disregard them and a few other praiseworthy examples, the offerings of the stage were of