Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

superst3te control of finance and economics. Only in this way could they forge a coalition
made strong and courageous by the sheer numbers of the gigantic armies now on the march
and prepared to attack the horny Siegfried at last.
The alliance with the Habsburg monarchy, which even in Austria had filled me with
dissatisfaction, now became the source of long inner trials which in the time to come
reinforced me even more in the opinion I had already conceived.
Even then, among those few people whom I frequented I made no secret of my conviction that
our catastrophic alliance with a state on the brink of ruin would also lead to a fatal collapse
of Germany unless we knew enough to release ourselves from it on time. This conviction of
mine was firm as a rock, and I did not falter ill it for one moment when at last the storm of
the World War seemed to have excluded all reasonable thought and a frenzy of enthusiasm
had seized even those quarters for which there should have been only the coldest
consideration of reality. And while I myself was at the front, I put forwards whenever these
problems were discussed, my opinion that the alliance had to be broken off, the quicker the
better for the German nation, and that the sacrifice of the Habsburg monarchy would be no
sacrifice at all to make if Germany thereby could achieve a restriction of her adversaries; for
it was not for the preservation of a debauched dynasty that the millions had donned the steel
helmet, but for the salvation of the German nation.
On a few occasions before the War it seemed as though, in one camp at least, a gentle doubt
was arising as to the correctness of the alliance policy that had been chosen. German
conservative circles began from time to time to warn against excessive confidence, but, like
everything else that was sensible, this was thrown to the winds. They were convinced that
they were on the path to a world ' conquest,' whose success would be tremendous and which
would entail practically no sacrifices.
There was nothing for those not in authority to do but to watch in silence why and how the '
authorities' marched straight to destruction, drawing the dear people behind them like the
Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The deeper cause that made it possible to represent the absurdity of an ' economic conquest '
as a practical political method, and the preservation of 'world peace' as a political goal for a
whole people, and even to make these things intelligible, lay in the general sickening of our
whole political thinking.
With the victorious march of German technology and industry, the rising successes of
German commerce, the realization was increasingly lost that all this was only possible on the
basis of a strong state. On the contrary, many circles went so far as to put forward the
conviction that the state owed its very existence to these phenomena, that the state itself
Drimarilv represented an economic institution, that it could be governed according to
economic requirements, and that its very existence depended on economics, a state of affairs
which was regarded and glorified as by far the healthiest and most natural.
But the state has nothing at all to do with any definite economic conception or development.
It is not a collection of economic contracting parties in a definite delimited living space for the
fulfillment of economic tasks, but the organization of a community of physically and
psychologically similar living beings for the better facilitation of the maintenance of their
species and the achievement of the aim which has been allotted to this species by
Providence. This and nothing else is the aim and meaning of a state. Economics is only one
of the many instruments required for the achievement of this aim. It is never the cause or the
aim of a state unless this state is based on a false, because unnatural, foundation to begin
with. Only in this way can it be explained that the state as such does not necessarily