Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

discover how superficial is the devotion of its citizens to its own symbol. The Republic has
given to itself the character of an intermezzo in German history. And so this State is bound
constantly to restrict more and more the sovereign rights of the individual states, not only for
general reasons of a financial character but also on principle. For by enforcing a policy of
financial blackmail, to squeeze the last ounce of substance out of its people, it is forced also
to take their last rights away from them, lest the general discontent may one day flame up
into open rebellion.
We, National Socialists, would reverse this formula and would adopt the following axiom: A
strong national Reich which recognizes and protects to the largest possible measure the
rights of its citizens both within and outside its frontiers can allow freedom to reign at home
without trembling for the safety of the State. On the other hand, a strong national
Government can intervene to a considerable degree in the liberties of the individual subject
as well as in the liberties of the constituent states without thereby weakening the ideal of the
Reich; and it can do this while recognizing its responsibility for the ideal of the Reich,
because in these particular acts and measures the individual citizen recognizes a means of
promoting the prestige of the nation as a whole.
Of course, every State in the world has to face the question of unification in its internal
organization. And Germany is no exception in this matter. Nowadays it is absurd to speak of
'statal sovereignty' for the constituent states of the Reich, because that has already become
impossible on account of the ridiculously small size of so many of these states. In the sphere
of commerce as well as that of administration the importance of the individual states has
been steadily decreasing. Modern means of communication and mechanical progress have
been increasingly restricting distance and space. What was once a State is today only a
province and the territory covered by a modern State had once the importance of a continent.
The purely technical difficulty of administering a State like Germany is not greater than that
of governing a province like Brandenburg a hundred years ago. And today it is easier to cover
the distance from Munich to Berlin than it was to cover the distance from Munich to
Starnberg a hundred years ago. In view of the modern means of transport, the whole territory
of the Reich today is smaller than that of certain German federal states at the time of the
Napoleonic wars. To close one's eyes to the consequences of these facts means to live in the
past. There always were, there are and always will be, men who do this. They may retard but
they cannot stop the revolutions of history.
We, National Socialists, must not allow the consequences of that truth to pass by us
unnoticed. In these matters also we must not permit ourselves to be misled by the phrases of
our so-called national bourgeois parties. I say 'phrases', because these same parodies do not
seriously believe that it is possible for them to carry out their proposals, and because they
themselves are the chief culprits and also the accomplices responsible for the present state of
affairs. Especially in Bavaria, the demands for a halt in the process of centralization can be
no more than a party move behind which there is no serious idea. If these parties ever had to
pass from the realm of phrase-making into that of practical deeds they would present a sorry
spectacle. Every so-called 'Robbery of Sovereign Rights' from Bavaria by the Reich has met
with no practical resistance, except for some fatuous barking by way of protest. Indeed, when
anyone seriously opposed the madness that was shown in carrying out this system of
centralization he was told by those same parties that he understood nothing of the nature
and needs of the State today. They slandered him and pronounced him anathema and
persecuted him until he was either shut up in prison or illegally deprived of the right of
public speech. In the light of these facts our followers should become all the more convinced
of the profound hypocrisy which characterizes these so-called federalist circles. To a certain
extent they use the federalist doctrine just as they use the name of religion, merely as a
means of promoting their own base party interests.