Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

openly expressed in the Reichstag by a particularly brilliant defender of Bavarian sovereign
rights when he said: "Rather die as a Bavarian than rot as a Prussian".
One should have attended some of the meetings held at that time in order to understand
what it meant for one when, for the first time and surrounded by only a handful of friends, I
raised my voice against this folly at a meeting held in the Munich Löwenbräu Keller. Some of
my War comrades stood by me then. And it is easy to imagine how we felt when that raging
crowd, which had lost all control of its reason, roared at us and threatened to kill us. During
the time that we were fighting for the country the same crowd were for the most part safely
ensconced in the rear positions or were peacefully circulating at home as deserters and
shirkers. It is true that that scene turned out to be of advantage to me. My small band of
comrades felt for the first time absolutely united with me and readily swore to stick by me
through life and death.
These conflicts, which were constantly repeated in 1919, seemed to become more violent
soon after the beginning of 1920. There were meetings – I remember especially one in the
Wagner Hall in the Sonnenstrasse in Munich – during the course of which my group, now
grown much larger, had to defend themselves against assaults of the most violent character.
It happened more than once that dozens of my followers were mishandled, thrown to the floor
and stamped upon by the attackers and were finally thrown out of the hall more dead than
alive.
The struggle which I had undertaken, first by myself alone and afterwards with the support
of my war comrades, was now continued by the young movement, I might say almost as a
sacred mission.
I am proud of being able to say today that we – depending almost exclusively on our followers
in Bavaria – were responsible for putting an end, slowly but surely, to the coalition of folly
and treason. I say folly and treason because, although convinced that the masses who joined
in it meant well but were stupid, I cannot attribute such simplicity as an extenuating
circumstance in the case of the organizers and their abetters. I then looked upon them,and
still look upon them today, as traitors in the payment of France. In one case, that of Dorten,
history has already pronounced its judgment.
The situation became specially dangerous at that time by reason of the fact that they were
very astute in their ability to cloak their real tendencies, by insisting primarily on their
federative intentions and claiming that those were the sole motives of the agitation. Of course
it is quite obvious that the agitation against Prussia had nothing to do with federalism.
Surely 'Federal Activities' is not the phrase with which to describe an effort to dissolve and
dismember another federal state. For an honest federalist, for whom the formula used by
Bismarck to define his idea of the Reich is not a counterfeit phrase, could not in the same
breath express the desire to cut off portions of the Prussian State, which was created or at
least completed by Bismarck. Nor could he publicly support such a separatist attempt.
What an outcry would be raised in Munich if some prussian conservative party declared itself
in favour of detaching Franconia from Bavaria or took public action in demanding and
promoting such a separatist policy. Nevertheless, one can only have sympathy for all those
real and honest federalists who did not see through this infamous swindle, for they were its
principal victims. By distorting the federalist idea in such a way its own champions prepared
its grave. One cannot make propaganda for a federalist configuration of the Reich by
debasing and abusing and besmirching the essential element of such a political structure,
namely Prussia, and thus making such a Confederation impossible, if it ever had been
possible. It is all the more incredible by reason of the fact that the fight carried on by those
so-called federalists was directed against that section of the Prussian people which was the
last that could be looked upon as connected with the November democracy. For the abuse
and attacks of these so-called federalists were not levelled against the fathers of the Weimar
Constitution – the majority of whom were South Germans or Jews – but against those who
represented the old conservative Prussia, which was the antipodes of the Weimar