HP2

WORKING WITH EVIDENCE I IDEOLOGIES OF THE AXIS POWERS 923

ADOLF HITLER

Mein Kampf (My Single) 1925-1926

Nation and Race There are some truths which are so obvious that for this very reason they are not seen or at least not recognized by ordinary people. . . . Ever)7 animal mates only with a member of the same species. . . . Any crossing of two beings not at exactly die same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents.... Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. . . . The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the bom weakling can view this as cruel . . . , for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.

In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. . . . No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thou­ sands of years, might be ruined with one blow. . . . All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live. . . .

All the human culture, all the results of art, sci­ ence, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. . . . [H]e alone was the founder of all higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word “man.” He is the Prometheus of mankind from whose bright forehead the divine spark of genius has sprung at all times. . . .

All who are nor of good race in this world are chaff.

The mightiest counterpart to the Aryan is repre­ sented by the Jew.... Since the Jew . .. was never in possession of a culture of his own, the founda­ tions of his intellectual work were always provided by others. His intellect at all times developed through the cultur ilworld surrounding him....

He lacks completely the most essential require­ ment for a cultured people, the idealistic attitude. In the Jewish people the will to self-sacrifice does not go beyond the individual’s naked instinct of self-preservation. Their apparently great sense of solidarity is based on the very’ primitive herd instinct that is seen in many other living creatures in this world.... [T|he Jew is led by nothing but the naked egoism of the individual.

With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy7 the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate.. . . And so he tries systemati­ cally to lower the racial level by a continuous poi­ soning of individuals. And in politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy by the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the organized mass of Marx­ ism he has found the weapon which lets him . .. subjugate and govern the peoples with a dictatorial and brutal fist.

In economics he undermines the states until the social enterprises which have become unprofitable are taken from the state and subjected to his finan­ cial control.

In the political field he refuses the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the founda­ tions of all national self-maintenance and defense, destroys faith in the leadership, scoffs at its history' and past, and drags everything that is truly great into the gutter.

924 CHAPTER 20 / COLLAPSE AT THE CENTER, 1914-1970$

Culturally he contaminates art, literature, the theater, makes a mockery of natural feeling, over­ throws all concepts of beauty and sublimity, of the noble and the good, and instead drags men down into the sphere of his own base nature. Religion is ridiculed, ethics and morality represented as out­ moded, until the last props of a nation in its struggle for existence in this world have fallen.

If we pass all the causes of the German collapse [defeat in World War l| in review, the ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the racial problem and especially the Jewish men­ ace. . . . The lost purity of the blood alone destroys inner happiness forever, plunges man into the abyss for all time, and the consequences can never more be eliminated from body and spirit. . . . All really significant symptoms of decay of the pre-War period can in the last analysis be reduced to racial causes.

The State

The State is only a means to an end........................Above all, it must preserve the existence of the race. . . . Wc, as Aryans, can consider the State only as the living organism of a people, an organism which does nor merely maintain the existence of a people, but func­ tions in such a way as to lead its people to a position of supreme liberty by the progressive development of the intellectual and cultural faculties.

We National Socialists know that in holding these views wc take up a revolutionary stand in the world of today and that wc are branded as revolutionaries. . . .

As a State the German Reich shall include all Germans. Its task is not only to gather in and fos­ ter the most valuable sections of our people but to lead them slowly and surely to a dominant position in the world. ... It will be the task of the People’s State to make the race the centre of the life of the community. It must make sure that the purity of the racial strain will be preserved. . . . Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unfit must not perpetuate their own suffering in the bodies of their children. . . .

One thing is certain: our world is facing a great revolution. The only question is whether the out­ come will be propitious for the Aryan portion of mankind or whether the everlasting Jew will profit

by it. By educating the young generation along die right lines, the People’s State will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which wil’, be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destinies of the world. . . .

[T]he People’s State must mercilessly expur­ gate . . . the parliamentarian principle, according to which decisive power through the majority vote is invested in the multitude. Personal responsibility must be substituted in its stead. . . . The best con­ stitution and the best form of government is that which makes it quite natural for the best brains to reach a position of dominant importance and influ­ ence in the community. . . . Genius of an extraor­ dinary stamp is not to be judged by normal stan­ dards whereby we judge other men.

There are no decisions made by the majority vote, but only by responsible persons. And the word “council” is once more restored to its origi- nal meaning. Every man in a position of responsi­ bility will have councilors at his side, but the deci­ sion is made by that individual person alone. . . •

[T]he principle of parliamentarian democracy, whereby decisions are enacted through the major­ ity vote, has not always ruled the world. On the contrary, wc find it prevalent only during short periods of history, and those have always beer periods of decline in nations and States. . . .

Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy

[W]e National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. ... If we speak of soil in Europe today, wc can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states. . . .

I'he National Socialist movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our popu­ lation and our area — viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics- between our historical past and the hopelessness ol our present impotence. And in this it must remain aware that we, as guardians of rhe highest human- ity on this earth, are bound by' the highest obliga­ tion, and the more it strives to bring the German people to racial awareness . . . , the more it will be able to meet this obligation. . . .

WORKING WITH EVIDENCE / IDEOLOGIES OF THE AXIS POWERS 925

State boundaries are made by man and changed by man.. . . And in this case, right lies in this strength alone. . . .Just as our ancestors did not receive the soil on which we live today as a gift from Heaven, but had to fight for it at the risk of their lives, in the future no folkish grace will win soil for us. . . but only the might of a victorious sword. . . .

Never forget that the most sacred right on this earth is a man's right to have earth to till with his own hands, and the most sacred sacrifice the blood that a man sheds for this earth.

Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943).

Source 20.2

The Japanese Way In the Japanese language, the word liokutdi is an evocative term that refers to the national essence or the fundamental character of the Japanese nation and people. Drawing both on long-established understandings and on recently developed nationalist ideas, the Ministry of Education in 37 published a small volume, widely distributed in schools and homes throughout the coun­ try, titled Kokutai No Hoiigi (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan). That text, excerpted in Source 20.2, defined the uniqueness of Japan and articulated the philosophical foundation of its authoritarian regime. (See pages 901-6 for the background to this document.) When the Americans occupied a defeated and devastated Japan in 1945, they forbade the further distribution of the book.

■ According to Cardinal Principles, what was kokutai? How did the docu­ ment define the national essence ofjapan? How did its authors compare

Japan to the West?

■ What was the ideal role of the individual in Japanese society?

■ To whom might these ideas have been attractive? Why?

■ How might this document have been used to justify Japan's military and territorial expansion?

■ Why do you think the American occupation authorities banned the document?

Cardinal Principles of the National Entity ofjapan 1937

The various ideological and social evils of present-day Japan are the result of ignoring the fundamental and running after the trivial, of

lack of judgment, and a failure to digest things thor­ oughly; and this is due to the fact that since the days

of Meiji so many aspects of European and American culture, systems, and learning, have been imported, and that, too rapidly. As a matter of fact, the foreign ideologies imported into our country are in the main ideologies of the [European] Enlightenment

926 CHAPTER 20 / COLLAPSE AT THE CENTER, 1914-1970s

that have come down from the eighteenth century, or extensions of them. The views of the world and of life that form the basis of these ideologies... lay the highest value on, and assert the liberty and equality of, individuals. . . .

We have already witnessed the boundless Impe­ rial virtues. Wherever this Imperial virtue of com­ passion radiates, the Way for the subjects naturally becomes clear. The Way of the subjects exists where the entire nation serves the Emperor united in mind.... That is, we by nature serve the Emperor and walk the Way of the Empire. . . .

We subjects are intrinsically quite different from the so-called citizens of the Occidental [Western] countries. . . .

When citizens who arc conglomerations of sep­ arate individuals independent of each other give support to a ruler, .. . there exists no deep founda­ tion between ruler and citizen to unite them. How­ ever, the relationship between the Emperor and his subjects arises from the same fountainhead, and has prospered ever since the founding of the nation as one in essence.. ..

Our country is established with the Emperor.. .. For this reason, to serve the Emperor and to receive the Emperor's great august Will as one's own is the rationale of making our historical “life" live in the present. .. .

Loyalty means to reverence the Emperor as our pivot and to follow him implicitly.. .. Hence, offering our lives for the sake of the Emperor docs not mean so-called self-sacrifice, but the casting aside of our little selves to live under his august grace and the enhancing of the genuine life of the people of a State. ... An individual is an existence belonging to the State and her history, which forms the basis of his origin, and is fundamentally one body with it....

Wc must sweep aside the corruption of the spirit and the clouding of knowledge that arises from set­ ting up one’s “seif' and from being taken up with one’s “self’ and return to a pure and dear state of mind that belongs intrinsically to us as subjects, and thereby fathom the great principle loyalty. . . .

Indeed, loyalty is our fundamental Way as sub­ ject, and is the basis of our national morality. Through loyalty arc we become Japanese subjects;

in loyalty do wc obtain life and herein do we find the source of all morality'. ...

In our country filial piety is a Way of the high­ est importance. Filial piety originates with one’s family as its basis, and in its larger sense has the nation for its foundation. . . .

Our country' is a great family nation, and the Imperial Household is the head family of the sub­ jects and the nucleus of national life. The subjects revere the Imperial Household, which is the head family, with the tender esteem they have for their ancestors; and the Emperor loves his subjects as his very own. . . .

When wc trace the marks of the facts of the founding of our country' and the progress of our history, what wc always find there is the spirit of harmony. . . . The spirit of harmony is built upon the concord of all things. When people deter­ minedly count themselves as masters and assert their egos, there is nothing but contradictions and the setting of one against the other; and harmony is not begotten. . . . That is, a society of individualism is one of the clashes between [masses of | people .. • and all history' may be looked upon as one of class wars. .. .

And this, this harmony is clearly seen in our nation’s martial spirit. Our nation is one that holds bushido the way of the warrior/samurai] in high regard, and there arc shrines deifying warlike spir­ its. . . . Bushido may be cited as showing an out­ standing characteristic of our national morality.. • • That is to say, though a sense of obligation binds master and servant, this has developed in a spirit of self-effacement and meeting death with a perfect calmness. In this, it was not that death was made light of so much as that man tempered himself to death and in a true sense regarded it with esteem. In effect, man tried to fulfill true life by the way of death. . . .

To put it in a nutshell, while the strong points of Occidental learning and concepts lie in their analytic.il and intellectual qualities, the characteris­ tics of Oriental learning and concepts lie in their intuitive and aesthetic qualities. These arc natur.il tendencies that arise through racial and historical differences; and when we compare them with our national spirits, concepts, or mode of living, wc

WORKING WITH EVIDENCE I IDEOLOGIES OF THE AXIS POWERS 927

cannot help recognizing further great and fun­ damental differences. Our nation has in the past imported, assimilated, and sublimated Chinese and Indian ideologies, and has therewith supported the Imperial Way, making possible the establish­ ment of an original culture based on her national polity....

Since the Meiji restoration our nation has adapted the good elements of the advanced education seen among European and American nations, and has exerted efforts to set up an educational system and materials for teaching. The nation has also assimi­ lated on a wide scale the scholarship of the West, not only in the fields of natural science, but of the mental sciences, and has thus striven to sec progress

made in our scholastic pursuits and to make educa­ tion more popular. . . .

However, at the same time, through the infiltra­ tion of individualistic concepts, both scholastic pur­ suits and education have tended to be taken up with a world in which the intellect alone mattered....

In order to correct these tendencies, the only course open to us is to clarify the true nature of our national polity, which is at the very source of our education, and to strive to cleai up individualistic and abstract ideas.

Source: J. O. Gauntlett, trans., and R. K. Hall, ed., Kokiuai No Uotini (Cardinal Principles of the National Entity of Japan) (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 53-183.

Ideologies of the Axis Powers

1. Making comparisons: What aspects of the Japanese document might Hitler have viewed with sympathy, and what parts ot it might he have found distasteful or offensive?

2. Criticizing the West: In what ways did Hitler and the authors of Cardinal Principles find fault with mainstream Western societies and their political and social values?

3. Considering ideas and circumstances: From what sources did the ideas expressed in these documents arise? What kinds of people would have found them attractive, and why?

4. Considering ideas and action: To what extent did the ideas articu­ lated in these documents find expression in particular actions or policies of political authorities?

5. Noticing continuity and change: To what extent were the ideas in these documents new and revolutionary? In what respects did they draw on long-standing traditions in their societies? In what ways did they embrace modern life, and what aspects of it did they reject? Have these ideas been completely discredited, or do they retain some resonance in contemporary political discourse?