Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

evolution, where seven-tenths repudiated it and six-tenths detested it – how this nation
allowed the Revolution to be imposed upon it by the remaining one-tenth of the population.
Gradually the barricade heroes in the Spartacist camp petered out, and so did the nationalist
patriots and idealists on the other side. As these two groups steadily dwindled, the masses of
the middle stratum, as always happens, triumphed. The Bourgeoisie and the Marxists met
together on the grounds of accomplished facts, and the Republic began to be consolidated. At
first, however, that did not prevent the bourgeois parties from propounding their monarchist
ideas for some time further, especially at the elections, whereby they endeavoured to conjure
up the spirits of the dead past to encourage their own feeble-hearted followers. It was not an
honest proceeding. In their hearts they had broken with the monarchy long ago; but the
foulness of the new regime had begun to extend its corruptive action and make itself felt in
the camp of the bourgeois parties. The common bourgeois politician now felt better in the
slime of republican corruption than in the severe decency of the defunct State, which still
lived in his memory.
As I have already pointed out, after the destruction of the old Army the revolutionary leaders
were forced to strengthen statal authority by creating a new factor of power. In the conditions
that existed they could do this only by winning over to their side the adherents of an outlook
which was a direct contradiction of their own. From those elements alone it was possible
slowly to create a new army which, limited numerically by the peace treaties, had to be
subsequently transformed in spirit so as to become an instrument of the new regime.
Setting aside the defects of the old State, which really became the cause of the Revolution, if
we ask how it was possible to carry the Revolution to a successful issue as a political act, we
arrive at the following conclusions:
1. It was due to a process of dry rot in our conceptions of duty and obedience.
2. It was due also to the passive timidity of the Parties who were supposed to uphold the
State.
To this the following must be added: The dry rot which attacked our concepts of duty and
obedience was fundamentally due to our wholly non-national and purely State education.
From this came the habit of confusing means and ends. Consciousness of duty, fulfilment of
duty, and obedience, are not ends in themselves no more than the State is an end in itself;
but they all ought to be employed as means to facilitate and assure the existence of a
community of people who are kindred both physically and spiritually. At a moment when a
nation is manifestly collapsing and when all outward signs show that it is on the point of
becoming the victim of ruthless oppression, thanks to the conduct of a few miscreants, to
obey these people and fulfil one's duty towards them is merely doctrinaire formalism, and
indeed pure folly; whereas, on the other hand, the refusal of obedience and fulfilment of duty
in such a case might save the nation from collapse. According to our current bourgeois idea
of the State, if a divisional general received from above the order not to shoot he fulfilled his
duty and therefore acted rightly in not shooting, because to the bourgeois mind blind formal
obedience is a more valuable thing than the life of a nation. But according to the National
Socialist concept it is not obedience to weak superiors that should prevail at such moments,
in such an hour the duty of assuming personal responsibility towards the whole nation
makes its appearance.
The Revolution succeeded because that concept had ceased to be a vital force with our
people, or rather with our governments, and died down to something that was merely formal
and doctrinaire.