Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

training. For on such proper physical development success in after-life largely depends. It is
stupid to think that the right of the State to supervise the education of its young citizens
suddenly comes to an end the moment they leave school and recommences only with military
service. This right is a duty, and as such it must continue uninterruptedly. The present
State, which does not interest itself in developing healthy men, has criminally neglected this
duty. It leaves our contemporary youth to be corrupted on the streets and in the brothels,
instead of keeping hold of the reins and continuing the physical training of these youths up
to the time when they are grown into healthy young men and women.
For the present it is a matter of indifference what form the State chooses for carrying on this
training. The essential matter is that it should be developed and that the most suitable ways
of doing so should be investigated. The People's State will have to consider the physical
training of the youth after the school period just as much a public duty as their intellectual
training; and this training will have to be carried out through public institutions. Its general
lines can be a preparation for subsequent service in the army. And then it will no longer be
the task of the army to teach the young recruit the most elementary drill regulations. In fact
the army will no longer have to deal with recruits in the present sense of the word, but it will
rather have to transform into a soldier the youth whose bodily prowess has been already fully
trained.
In the People's State the army will no longer be obliged to teach boys how to walk and stand
erect, but it will be the final and supreme school of patriotic education. In the army the
young recruit will learn the art of bearing arms, but at the same time he will be equipped for
his other duties in later life. And the supreme aim of military education must always be to
achieve that which was attributed to the old army as its highest merit: namely, that through
his military schooling the boy must be transformed into a man, that he must not only learn
to obey but also acquire the fundamentals that will enable him one day to command. He
must learn to remain silent not only when he is rightly rebuked but also when he is wrongly
rebuked.
Furthermore, on the self-consciousness of his own strength and on the basis of that esprit de
corps which inspires him and his comrades, he must become convinced that he belongs to a
people who are invincible.
After he has completed his military training two certificates shall be handed to the soldier.
The one will be his diploma as a citizen of the State, a juridical document which will enable
him to take part in public affairs. The second will be an attestation of his physical health,
which guarantees his fitness for marriage.
The People's State will have to direct the education of girls just as that of boys and according
to the same fundamental principles. Here again special importance must be given to physical
training, and only after that must the importance of spiritual and mental training be taken
into account. In the education of the girl the final goal always to be kept in mind is that she
is one day to be a mother.
It is only in the second place that the People's State must busy itself with the training of
character, using all the means adapted to that purpose.
Of course the essential traits of the individual character are already there fundamentally
before any education takes place. A person who is fundamentally egoistic will always remain
fundamentally egoistic, and the idealist will always remain fundamentally an idealist. Besides
those, however, who already possess a definite stamp of character there are millions of
people with characters that are indefinite and vague. The born delinquent will always remain
a delinquent, but numerous people who show only a certain tendency to commit criminal
acts may become useful members of the community if rightly trained; whereas, on the other
hand, weak and unstable characters may easily become evil elements if the system of
education has been bad.
During the War it was often lamented that our people could be so little reticent. This failing
made it very difficult to keep even highly important secrets from the knowledge of the enemy.