Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Chapter XII: The First Period of Development of the National Socialist German
Workers' Party
IF AT THE END of this volume I describe the first period in the development of our movement
and briefly discuss a number of questions it raises, my aim is not to give a dissertation on
the spiritual aims of the movement. The aims and tasks of the new movement are so gigantic
that they can only be treated in a special volume. In a second volume, therefore, I shall
discuss the programmatic foundations of the movement in detail and attempt to draw a
picture of what we conceive of under the word 'state.' By 'us' I mean all the hundreds of
thousands who fundamentally long for the same thing without as individuals finding the
words to describe outwardly I what they inwardly visualize; for the noteworthy fact about all
reforms is that at first they possess but a single champion yet many million supporters. Their
aim has often been for centuries the inner longing of hundreds of thousands, until one man
stands up to proclaim such a general will, and as a standard-bearer guides the old longing to
victory in the form of the new idea.
The fact that millions bear in their hearts the desire for a basic change in the conditions
obtaining today proves the deep discontent under which they suffer. It expresses itself in
thousandfold manifestations with one in despair and hopelessness, with another in ill will,
anger, and indignation; with this man in indifference, and with that man in furious excesses.
As witnesses to this inner dissatisfaction we may consider those who are weary of elections
as well as the many who tend to the most fanatical extreme of the Left.
The young movement was intended primarily to appeal to these last. It is not meant to
constitute an organization of the contented and satisfied, but to embrace those tormented by
suffering, those without peace, the unhappy and the discontented, and above all it must not
swim on the surface of a national body, but strike roots deep within it.
In purely political terms, the following picture presented itself in 1918: a people torn into two
parts. The one, by far the smaller, includes the strata of the national intelligentsia, excluding
all the physically active. It is outwardly national, yet under this word can conceive of nothing
but a very insipid and weak-kneed defense of so-called state interests, which in turn seem
identical with dynastic interests. They attempt to fight for their ideas and aims with spiritual
weapons which are as fragmentary as they are superficial, and which fail completely in the
face of the enemy's brutality. With a single frightful blow this class, which only a short time
before was still governing, is stretched on the ground and with trembling cowardice suffers
every humiliation at the hands of the ruthless victor.
Confronting it is a second class, the broad mass of the laboring population. It is organized in
more or less radical Marxist movements, determined to break all spiritual resistance by the
power of violence. It does not want to be national, but consciously rejects any promotion of
national interests, just as, conversely, it aids and abets all foreign oppression. It is
numerically the stronger and above all comprises all those elements of the nation without
which a national resurrection is unthinkable and impossible.
For in 1918 this much was clear: no resurrection of the German people can occur except
through the recovery of outward power. But the prerequisites for this are not arms, as our
bourgeois 'statesmen ' keep prattling, but the forces of the will. The German people had more
than enough arms before. They were not able to secure freedom because the energies of the