Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

Herr Harrer,l then first chairman of the party, felt he could not support my views with regard
to the time chosen and consequently, being an honest, upright man, he withdrew from the
leadership of the party. His place was taken by Herr Anton Drexler. I had reserved for myself
the organization of propaganda and began ruthlessly to carry it out.
And so, the date of February 4, 19202 was set for the holding of this first great mass meeting
of the still unknown movement.
I personally conducted the preparations. They were very brief. Altogether the whole
apparatus was adjusted to make lightning decisions. Its aim was to enable us to take a
position on current questions in the form of mass meetings within twenty-four hours. They
were to be announced by posters and leaflets whose content was determined according to
those guiding principles which in rough outlines I have set down in my treatise on
propaganda. Effect on the broad masses, concentration on a few points, constant repetition
of the same, self-assured and self-reliant framing of the text in the forms of an apodictic
statement, greatest perseverance in distribution and patience in awaiting the effect.
On principle, the color red was chosen; it is the most exciting; we knew it would infuriate and
provoke our adversaries the most and thus bring us to their attention and memory whether
they liked it or not.
In the following period the inner fraternization in Bavaria between the Marxists and the
Center as a political party was most clearly shown in the concern with which the ruling
Bavarian People's Party tried to weaken the effect of our posters on the Red working masses
and later to prohibit them. If the police found no other way to proceed against them,
'considerations of traffic' had to do the trick, till finally, to please the inner, silent Red ally,
these posters, which had given back hundreds of thousands of workers, incited and seduced
by internationalism, to their German nationality, were forbidden entirely with the helping
hand of a so-called German National People's Party. As an appendix and example to our
young movement, I am adding a number of these proclamations. They come from a period
embracing nearly three years; they can best illustrate the mighty struggle which the young
movement fought at this time. They will also bear witness to posterity of the will and honesty
of our convictions and the despotism of the so-called national authorities in prohibiting, just
because they personally found it uncomfortable, a nationalization which would have won
back broad masses of our nationality.
They will also help to destroy the opinion that there had been a national government as such
in Bavaria and also document for posterity the fact that the national Bavaria of 1919, 1920,
1921 1922, 1923 was not forsooth the result of a national government, but that the
government was merely forced to take consideration of a people that was gradually feeling
national
The governments themselves did everything to eliminate this process of recovery and to make
it impossible.
Here only two men must be excluded:
Ernst Pohner, the police president at that tirne, and Chief Deputy frick his faithful advisor,
were the only higher state officials who even then had the courage to be first Germans and
then officials. Ernst Pohner was the only man in a responsible post who did not curry favor
with the masses, but felt responsible to his nationality and was ready to risk and sacrifice
everything, even if necessary his personal existence, for the resurrection of the German
people whom he loved above all things. And for this reason he was always a troublesome
thorn in the eyes of those venal officials the law of whose actions was prescribed, not by the
interest of their people and the necessary uprising for its freedom, but by the boss's orders,
without regard for the welfare of the national trust confided in them.
And above all he was one of those natures who, contrasting with most of the guardians of our
so-called state authority, do not fear the enmity of traitors to the people and the nation, but
long for it as for a treasure which a decent man must take for granted. The hatred of Jews