Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

man-power. The enormous crime that was thus committed could not help but be clear to
everyone who just considered that, in case of a coming war, the entire nation would have to
take up arms, and that, therefore, through the rascality of these savory representatives of
their own so-called 'popular representation,' millions of Germans were driven to face the
enemy half-trained and badly trained. But even if the consequences resulting from the brutal
and savage unscrupulousness of these parliamentary pimps were left entirely out of
consideration: this lack of trained soldiers at the beginning of the War could easily lead to its
loss, and this was most terribly confirmed in the great World War.
The loss of the fight for the freedom and independence of the German nation is the result of
the half-heartedness and weakness manifested even in peacetime as regards drafting the
entire national man-power for the defense of the fatherland.
If too few recruits were trained on the land, the same halfheartedness was at work on the
sea, making the weapon of national self-preservation more or less worthless. Unfortunately
the navy leadership was itself infected with the spirit of halfheartedness. The tendency to
build all ships a little smaller than the English ships which were being launched at the same
time was hardly farsighted, much less brilliant. Especially a fleet which from the beginning
can in point of pure numbers not be brought to the same level as its presumable adversary
must seek to compensate for the lack of numbers by the superior fighting power of its
individual ships. It is the superior fighting power which matters and not any legendary
superiority in 'quality.' Actually modern technology is so far advanced and has achieved so
much uniformity in the various civilized countries that it must be held impossible to give the
ships of one power an appreciably larger combat value than the ships of like tonnage of
another state. And it is even less conceivable to achieve a superiority with smaller
deplacement as compared to larger.
In actual fact, the smaller tonnage of the German ships was possible only at the cost of speed
and armament. The phrase with which people attempted to justify this fact showed a very
serious lack of logic in the department responsible for this in peacetime. They declared, for
instance, that the material of the German guns was so obviously superior to the British that
the German 28-centimeter gun was not behind the British 30.5centimeter gun in
performance!!
But for this very reason it would have been our duty to change over to the 30.5-centimeter
gun, for the goal should have been the achievement, not of equal but of superior fighting
power. Otherwise it would have been superfluous for the army to order the 42-centimeter
mortar, since the German 21-centimeter mortar was in itself superior to any then existing
high trajectory French cannon, and the fortresses would have likewise fallen to the 30.5centimeter
mortar. The leadership of the land army, however, thought soundly, while that of
the navy unfortunately did not.
The neglect of superior artillery power and superior speed lay entirely in. the absolutely
erroneous so-called 'idea of risk.' The navy leadership by the very form in which it expanded
the fleet renounced attack and thus from the outset inevitably assumed the defensive. But in
this they also renounced the ultimate success which is and can only be forever in attack.
A ship of smaller speed and weaker armament will as a rule be sent to the bottom by a
speedier and more heavily armed enemy at the firing distance favorable for the latter. A
number of our cruisers were to find this out to their bitter grief. The utter mistakenness of
the peacetime opinion of the navy staff was shown by the War, which forced the introduction,
whenever possible, of modified armament in old ships and better armament in newer ones. If
in the battle of Skagerrak the German ships had had the tonnage, the armament, the same