Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

always had a considerable lack of will-power and the capacity for making decisions. For
example, the more 'intellectual' our statesmen have been the more lacking they have been,
for the most part, in practical achievement. Our political preparation and our technical
equipment for the world war were defective, certainly not because the brains governing the
nation were too little educated, but because the men who directed our public affairs were
over-educated, filled to over-flowing with knowledge and intelligence, yet without any sound
instinct and simply without energy, or any spirit of daring. It was our nation's tragedy to
have to fight for its existence under a Chancellor who was a dillydallying philosopher. If
instead of a Bethmann von Hollweg we had had a rough man of the people as our leader the
heroic blood of the common grenadier would not have been shed in vain. The exaggeratedly
intellectual material out of which our leaders were made proved to be the best ally of the
scoundrels who carried out the November revolution. These intellectuals safeguarded the
national wealth in a miserly fashion, instead of launching it forth and risking it, and thus
they set the conditions on which the others won success.
Here the Catholic Church presents an instructive example. Clerical celibacy forces the
Church to recruit its priests not from their own ranks but progressively from the masses of
the people. Yet there are not many who recognize the significance of celibacy in this relation.
But therein lies the cause of the inexhaustible vigour which characterizes that ancient
institution. For by thus unceasingly recruiting the ecclesiastical dignitaries from the lower
classes of the people, the Church is enabled not only to maintain the contact of instinctive
understanding with the masses of the population but also to assure itself of always being
able to draw upon that fund of energy which is present in this form only among the popular
masses. Hence the surprising youthfulness of that gigantic organism, its mental flexibility
and its iron will-power.
It will be the task of the Peoples' State so to organize and administer its educational system
that the existing intellectual class will be constantly furnished with a supply of fresh blood
from beneath. From the bulk of the nation the State must sift out with careful scrutiny those
persons who are endowed with natural talents and see that they are employed in the service
of the community. For neither the State itself nor the various departments of State exist to
furnish revenues for members of a special class, but to fulfil the tasks allotted to them. This
will be possible, however, only if the State trains individuals specially for these offices. Such
individuals must have the necessary fundamental capabilities and will-power. The principle
does not hold true only in regard to the civil service but also in regard to all those who are to
take part in the intellectual and moral leadership of the people, no matter in what sphere
they may be employed. The greatness of a people is partly dependent on the condition that it
must succeed in training the best brains for those branches of the public service for which
they show a special natural aptitude and in placing them in the offices where they can do
their best work for the good of the community. If two nations of equal strength and quality
engage in a mutual conflict that nation will come out victorious which has entrusted its
intellectual and moral leadership to its best talents and that nation will go under whose
government represents only a common food trough for privileged groups or classes and where
the inner talents of its individual members are not availed of.
Of course such a reform seems impossible in the world as it is today. The objection will at
once be raised, that it is too much to expect from the favourite son of a highly-placed civil
servant, for instance, that he shall work with his hands simply because somebody else whose
parents belong to the working-class seems more capable for a job in the civil service. That
argument may be valid as long as manual work is looked upon in the same way as it is
looked upon today. Hence the Peoples' State will have to take up an attitude towards the
appreciation of manual labour which will be fundamentally different from that which now
exists. If necessary, it will have to organize a persistent system of teaching which will aim at
abolishing the present-day stupid habit of looking down on physical labour as an occupation
to be ashamed of.