Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

immediately take the existing picture as a norm, and from it will derive all the individual
items regarding these questions, assembled in the course of decades, submit them to the
mind for examination and reconsideration, until the question is clarified or answered.
Only this kind of reading has meaning and purpose.
An orator, for example, who does not thus provide his intelligence with the necessary
foundation will never be in a position cogently to defend his view in the face of opposition,
though it may be a thousand times true or real. In every discussion his memory will
treacherously leave him in the lurch; he will find neither grounds for reinforcing his own
contentions nor any for confuting those of his adversary. If, as in the case of a speaker, it is
only a question of making a fool of himself personally, it may not be so bad, but not so when
Fate predestines such a know-it-all incompetent to be the leader of a state.
Since my earliest youth I have endeavored to read in the correct way, and in this endeavor I
have been most happily supported by my memory and intelligence. Viewed in this light, my
Vienna period was especially fertile and valuable. The experiences of daily life provided
stimulation for a constantly renewed study of the most varied problems. Thus at last I was in
a position to bolster up reality by theory and test theory by reality, and was preserved from
being stifled by theory or growing banal through reality.
In this period the experience of daily life directed and stimulated me to the most thorough
theoretical study of two questions in addition to the social question.
Who knows when I would have immersed myself in the doctrines and essence of Marxism if
that period had not literally thrust my nose into the problem!
What I knew of Social Democracy in my youth was exceedingly little and very inaccurate.
I was profoundly pleased that it should carry on the struggle for universal suffrage and the
secret ballot. For even then my intelligence told me that this must help to weaken the
Habsburg regime which I so hated. In the conviction that the Austrian Empire could never be
preserved except by victimizing its Germans, but that even the price of a gradual Slavization
of the German element by no means provided a guaranty of an empire really capable of
survival, since the power of the Slavs to uphold the state must be estimated as exceedingly
dubious, I welcomed every development which in my opinion would inevitably lead to the
collapse of this impossible state which condemned ten million Germans to death. The more
the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable
hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my
German-Austrian people. Only in this way could the Anschluss with the old mother country
be restored.
Consequently, this activity of the Social Democracy was not displeasing to me. And the fact
that it strove to improve the living conditions of the worker, as, in my innocence, I was still
stupid enough to believe, likewise seemed to speak rather for it than against it. What most
repelled me was its hostile attitude toward the struggle for the preservation of Germanism, its
disgraceful courting of the Slavic 'comrade,' who accepted this declaration of love in so far as
it was bound up with practical concessions, but otherwise maintained a lofty and arrogant
reserve, thus giving the obtrusive beggars their deserved reward.
Thus, at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was as yet little known to me, while ' Social
Democracy ' and socialism seemed to me identical concepts. Here again it required the fist of
Fate to open my eyes to this unprecedented betrayal of the peoples.
Up to that time I had known the Social Democratic Party only as an onlooker at a few mass
demonstrations, without possessing even the slightest insight into the mentality of its
adherents or the nature of its doctrine; but now, at one stroke, I came into contact with the
products of its education and 'philosophy.' And in a few months I obtained what might