Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

twenty years; it was inevitably a matter of centuries; for in all questions of colonization,
persistence assumes greater importance than the energy of the moment.
It goes without saying that the administration as well as the political direction must be
conducted with strict uniforrnity. To me it was infinitely instructive to ascertain why this did
not occur,. or rather, why it was not done.l He who was guilty of this omission was alone to
blame for the collapse of the Empire.
Old Austria more than any other state depended on the greatness of her leaders. The
foundation was lacking for a national state, which in its national basis always possesses the
power of survival, regardless how deficient the leadership as such may be. A homogeneous
national state can, by virtue of the natural inertia of its inhabitants, and the resulting power
of resistance, sometimes withstand astonishingly long periods of the worst administration or
leadership without inwardly disintegrating. At such times it often seems as though there
were no more life in such a body, as though it were dead and done for, but one fine day the
supposed corpse suddenly rises and gives the rest of humanity astonishing indications of its
unquenchable vital force.
It is different, however, with an empire not consisting of similar peoples, which is held
together not by common blood but by a common fist. In this case the weakness of leadership
will not cause a hibernation of the state, but an awakening of all the individual instincts
which are present in the blood, but carmot develop in times when there is a dominant will.
Only by a common education extending over centuries, by common tradition, common
interests, etc., can this danger be attenuated. Hence the younger such state formations are,
the more they depend on the greatness of leadership, and if they are the work of outstanding
soldiers and spiritual heroes, they often crumble immediately after the death of the great
solitary founder. But even after centuries these dangers cannot be regarded as overcome;
they only lie dormant, often suddenly to awaken as soon as the weakness of the common
leadership and the force of education and all the sublime traditions can no longer overcome
the impetus of the vital urge of the individual tribes.
Not to have understood this is perhaps the tragic guilt of the House of Habsburg.
For only a single one of them did Fate once again raise high the torch over the future of his
country, then it was extinguished for-ever.
Joseph IIX Roman Emperor of the German nation, saw with fear and trepidation how his
House, forced to the outermost corner of the Empire, would one day inevitably vanish in the
maelstrom of a Babylon of nations unless at the eleventh hour the omissions of his
forefathers were made good. With super-human power this 'friend of man' braced himself
against the negligence of his ancestors and endeavored to retrieve in one decade what
centuries had failed to do. If he had been granted only forty years for his work, and if after
him even two generations had continued his work as he began it, the miracle would probably
have been achieved. But when, after scarcely ten years on the thrones worn in body and
soul, he died, his work sank with him into the grave, to awaken no more and sleep forever in
the Capuchin crypt. His successors were equal to the task neither in mind nor in will.
When the first revolutionary lightnings of a new era flashed through Europe, Austria, too,
slowly began to catch fire, little by little. But when the fire at length broke out, the flame was
fanned less by social or general political causes than by dynamic forces of national origin.
The revolution of 1848 may have been a class struggle everywhere, but in Austria it was the
beginning of a new racial war. By forgetting or not recognizing this origin and putting
themselves in the service of the revolutionary uprising, the Germans sealed their own fate.
They helped to arouse the spirit of 'Western democracy,' which in a short time removed the
foundations of their own existence.
With the formation of a parliamentary representative body without the previous
establishment and crystallization of a common state language, the cornerstone had been laid
for the end of German domination of the monarchy.' From this moment on the state itself
was lost. All that followed was merely the historic liquidation of an empire.