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Soma mein Kampf ndugu..
IN THE HOME OF MY PARENTS
It has turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed
Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated
just on the frontier between those two States the reunion of which
seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we
should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means
should be employed.
German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not
indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even
if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were
to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to
take place. People of the same blood should be in the same REICH. The
German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until
they shall have brought all their children together in the one State.
When the territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds
itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right
arise, from the need of the people to acquire foreign territory. The
plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily
bread for the generations to come.
And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great
task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is
applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot
was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German
nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German
history. At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a
bookseller, Johannes Palm, uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the
French, was put to death here because he had the misfortune to have
loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his
associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for
the affair. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like
the latter, was denounced to the French by a Government agent. It was a
director of police from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that
occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by
the neo-German officials of the REICH under Herr Severing's
regime (Note 1).
[Note 1. In order to understand the reference here, and similar
references in later portions of MEIN KAMPF, the following must be borne
in mind:
From 1792 to 1814 the French Revolutionary Armies overran Germany. In
1800 Bavaria shared in the Austrian defeat at Hohenlinden and the French
occupied Munich. In 1805 the Bavarian Elector was made King of Bavaria by
Napoleon and stipulated to back up Napoleon in all his wars with a force
of 30,000 men. Thus Bavaria became the absolute vassal of the French.
This was 'TheTime of Germany's Deepest Humiliation', Which is referred
to again and again by Hitler.
In 1806 a pamphlet entitled 'Germany's Deepest Humiliation' was
published in South Germany. Amnng those who helped to circulate the
pamphlet was the N�rnberg bookseller, Johannes Philipp Palm. He was
denounced to the French by a Bavarian police agent. At his trial he
refused to disclose thename of the author. By Napoleon's orders, he was
shot at Braunau-on-the-Innon August 26th, 1806. A monument erected to
him on the site of the executionwas one of the first public objects that
made an impression on Hitler asa little boy.
Leo Schlageter's case was in many respects parallel to that of Johannes
Palm. Schlageter was a German theological student who volunteered for
service in 1914. He became an artillery officer and won the Iron Cross of
both classes. When the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923 Schlageter helped
to organize the passive resistance on the German side. He and his
companions blew up a railway bridge for the purpose of making the
transport of coal to France more difficult.
Those who took part in the affair were denounced to the French by a
German informer. Schlageter took the whole responsibility on his own
shoulders and was condemned to death, his companions being sentenced to
various terms of imprisonment and penal servitude by the French Court.
Schlageter refused to disclose the identity of those who issued the order
to blow up the railway bridge and he would not plead for mercy before a
French Court. He was shot by a French firing-squad on May 26th, 1923.
Severing was at that time German Minister of the Interior. It is said
that representations were made, to himon Schlageter's behalf and that he
refused to interfere.
Schlageter has become the chief martyr of the German resistancc to the
French occupation of the Ruhr and also one of the great heroes of the
National Socialist Movement. He had joined the Movement at a very early
stage, his card of membership bearing the number 61.]
In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr,
a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian
State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century. My
father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very
conscientiously. My mother looked after the household and lovingly
devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not
retained very much in my memory; because after a few years my father had
to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up
a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in
Germany itself.
In those days it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be
transferred periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming
to Passau my father was transferred to Linz, and while there he retired
finally to live on his pension. But this did not mean that the old
gentleman would now rest from his labours.
He was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew
restless and left home. When he was barely thirteen years old he buckled
on his satchel and set forth from his native woodland parish. Despite
the dissuasion of villagers who could speak from 'experience,' he went
to Vienna to learn a trade there. This was in the fiftieth year of the
last century. It was a sore trial, that of deciding to leave home and
face the unknown, with three gulden in his pocket. By when the boy of
thirteen was a lad of seventeen and had passed his apprenticeship
examination as a craftsman he was not content. Quite the contrary. The
persistent economic depression of that period and the constant want and
misery strengthened his resolution to give up working at a trade and
strive for 'something higher.' As a boy it had seemed to him that the
position of the parish priest in his native village was the highest in
the scale of human attainment; but now that the big city had enlarged
his outlook the young man looked up to the dignity of a State official
as the highest of all. With the tenacity of one whom misery and trouble
had already made old when only half-way through his youth the young man
of seventeen obstinately set out on his new project and stuck to it
until he won through. He became a civil servant. He was about
twenty-three years old, I think, when he succeeded in making himself
what he had resolved to become. Thus he was able to fulfil the promise
he had made as a poor boy not to return to his native village until he
was 'somebody.'
He had gained his end. But in the village there was nobody who had
remembered him as a little boy, and the village itself had become
strange to him.
Now at last, when he was fifty-six years old, he gave up his active
career; but he could not bear to be idle for a single day. On the
outskirts of the small market town of Lambach in Upper Austria he bought
a farm and tilled it himself. Thus, at the end of a long and
hard-working career, he came back to the life which his father had led.
It was at this period that I first began to have ideals of my own. I
spent a good deal of time scampering about in the open, on the long road
from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest of the boys, which
caused my mother many anxious moments. All this tended to make me
something quite the reverse of a stay-at-home. I gave scarcely any
serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but I
was certainly quite out of sympathy with the kind of career which my
father had followed. I think that an inborn talent for speaking now
began to develop and take shape during the more or less strenuous
arguments which I used to have with my comrades. I had become a juvenile
ringleader who learned well and easily at school but was rather
difficult to manage. In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of
the monastery church at Lambach, and thus it happened that I was placed
in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and
again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial. What
could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing
the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the
humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days?
At least, that was my idea for a while. But the juvenile disputes I had
with my father did not lead him to appreciate his son's oratorical gifts
in such a way as to see in them a favourable promise for such a career,
and so he naturally could not understand the boyish ideas I had in my
head at that time. This contradiction in my character made him feel
somewhat anxious.
As a matter of fact, that transitory yearning after such a vocation soon
gave way to hopes that were better suited to my temperament. Browsing
through my father's books, I chanced to come across some publications
that dealt with military subjects. One of these publications was a
popular history of the Franco-German War of 1870-71. It consisted of two
volumes of an illustrated periodical dating from those years. These
became my favourite reading. In a little while that great and heroic
conflict began to take first place in my mind. And from that time
onwards I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in
any way connected with war or military affairs.
But this story of the Franco-German War had a special significance for
me on other grounds also. For the first time, and as yet only in quite a
vague way, the question began to present itself: Is there a
difference--and if there be, what is it--between the Germans who fought
that war and the other Germans? Why did not Austria also take part in
it? Why did not my father and all the others fight in that struggle? Are
we not the same as the other Germans? Do we not all belong together?
That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small
brain. And from the replies that were given to the questions which I
asked very tentatively, I was forced to accept the fact, though with a
secret envy, that not all Germans had the good luck to belong to
Bismarck's Empire. This was something that I could not understand.
It was decided that I should study. Considering my character as a whole,
and especially my temperament, my father decided that the classical
subjects studied at the Lyceum were not suited to my natural talents. He
thought that the REALSCHULE (Note 2) would suit me better. My obvious
talent for drawing confirmed him in that view; for in his opinion drawing
was a subject too much neglected in the Austrian GYMNASIUM. Probably also
the memory of the hard road which he himself had travelled contributed to
make him look upon classical studies as unpractical and accordingly to
set little value on them. At the back of his mind he had the idea that
his son also should become an official of the Government. Indeed he had
decided on that career for me. The difficulties through which he had to
struggle in making his own career led him to overestimate what he had
achieved, because this was exclusively the result of his own
indefatigable industry and energy. The characteristic pride of the
self-made man urged him towards the idea that his son should follow the
same calling and if possible rise to a higher position in it. Moreover,
this idea was strengthened by the consideration that the results of his
own life's industry had placed him in a position to facilitate his son's
advancement in the same career.
[Note 2. Non-classical secondary school. The Lyceum and GYMNASIUM were
classical or semi-classical secondary schools.]
He was simply incapable of imagining that I might reject what had meant
everything in life to him. My father's decision was simple, definite,
clear and, in his eyes, it was something to be taken for granted. A man
of such a nature who had become an autocrat by reason of his own hard
struggle for existence, could not think of allowing 'inexperienced' and
irresponsible young fellows to choose their own careers. To act in such
a way, where the future of his own son was concerned, would have been a
grave and reprehensible weakness in the exercise of parental authority
and responsibility, something utterly incompatible with his
characteristic sense of duty.
And yet it had to be otherwise.
For the first time in my life--I was then eleven years old--I felt
myself forced into open opposition. No matter how hard and determined my
father might be about putting his own plans and opinions into action,
his son was no less obstinate in refusing to accept ideas on which he
set little or no value.
I would not become a civil servant.
No amount of persuasion and no amount of 'grave' warnings could break
down that opposition. I would not become a State official, not on any
account. All the attempts which my father made to arouse in me a love or
liking for that profession, by picturing his own career for me, had only
the opposite effect. It nauseated me to think that one day I might be
fettered to an office stool, that I could not dispose of my own time but
would be forced to spend the whole of my life filling out forms.
One can imagine what kind of thoughts such a prospect awakened in the
mind of a young fellow who was by no means what is called a 'good boy'
in the current sense of that term. The ridiculously easy school tasks
which we were given made it possible for me to spend far more time in
the open air than at home. To-day, when my political opponents pry into
my life with diligent scrutiny, as far back as the days of my boyhood,
so as finally to be able to prove what disreputable tricks this Hitler
was accustomed to in his young days, I thank heaven that I can look back
to those happy days and find the memory of them helpful. The fields and
the woods were then the terrain on which all disputes were fought out.
Even attendance at the REALSCHULE could not alter my way of spending my
time. But I had now another battle to fight.
So long as the paternal plan to make a State functionary contradicted my
own inclinations only in the abstract, the conflict was easy to bear. I
could be discreet about expressing my personal views and thus avoid
constantly recurrent disputes. My own resolution not to become a
Government official was sufficient for the time being to put my mind
completely at rest. I held on to that resolution inexorably. But the
situation became more difficult once I had a positive plan of my own
which I might present to my father as a counter-suggestion. This
happened when I was twelve years old. How it came about I cannot exactly
say now; but one day it became clear to me that I would be a painter--I
mean an artist. That I had an aptitude for drawing was an admitted fact.
It was even one of the reasons why my father had sent me to the
REALSCHULE; but he had never thought of having that talent developed in
such a way that I could take up painting as a professional career. Quite
the contrary. When, as a result of my renewed refusal to adopt his
favourite plan, my father asked me for the first time what I myself
really wished to be, the resolution that I had already formed expressed
itself almost automatically. For a while my father was speechless. "A
painter? An artist-painter?" he exclaimed.
He wondered whether I was in a sound state of mind. He thought that he
might not have caught my words rightly, or that he had misunderstood
what I meant. But when I had explained my ideas to him and he saw how
seriously I took them, he opposed them with that full determination
which was characteristic of him. His decision was exceedingly simple and
could not be deflected from its course by any consideration of what my
own natural qualifications really were.
"Artist! Not as long as I live, never." As the son had inherited some of
the father's obstinacy, besides having other qualities of his own, my
reply was equally energetic. But it stated something quite the contrary.
At that our struggle became stalemate. The father would not abandon his
'Never', and I became all the more consolidated in my 'Nevertheless'.
Naturally the resulting situation was not pleasant. The old gentleman
was bitterly annoyed; and indeed so was I, although I really loved him.
My father forbade me to entertain any hopes of taking up the art of
painting as a profession. I went a step further and declared that I
would not study anything else. With such declarations the situation
became still more strained, so that the old gentleman irrevocably
decided to assert his parental authority at all costs. That led me to
adopt an attitude of circumspect silence, but I put my threat into
execution. I thought that, once it became clear to my father that I was
making no progress at the REALSCHULE, for weal or for woe, he would be
forced to allow me to follow the happy career I had dreamed of.
I do not know whether I calculated rightly or not. Certainly my failure
to make progress became quite visible in the school. I studied just the
subjects that appealed to me, especially those which I thought might be
of advantage to me later on as a painter. What did not appear to have
any importance from this point of view, or what did not otherwise appeal
to me favourably, I completely sabotaged. My school reports of that time
were always in the extremes of good or bad, according to the subject and
the interest it had for me. In one column my qualification read 'very
good' or 'excellent'. In another it read 'average' or even 'below
average'. By far my best subjects were geography and, even more so,
general history. These were my two favourite subjects, and I led the
class in them.
When I look back over so many years and try to judge the results of that
experience I find two very significant facts standing out clearly before
my mind.
First, I became a nationalist.
Second, I learned to understand and grasp the true meaning of history