September 16, 1919 Report of Corporal Adolf Hitler to Captain Karl Mayr
[Captain Mayr, director of an official army unit called the Education Squad asked Corporal Hitler for a clarification of the army’s position on “the Jewish question.” Hitler’s reply is his first surviving writing on the subject of politics.]
If the threat with which Jewry faces our people has given rise to undeniable hostility on the part of a large section of our people, the cause of this hostility must not be sought in the clear recognition that Jewry as such is deliberately or unwittingly having a pernicious effect on our nation, but mostly in personal intercourse, in the poor impression the Jew makes as an individual. As a result, anti-Semitism far too readily assumes a purely emotional character. But this is not the correct response. Anti-Semitism as a political movement may not and cannot be molded by emotional factors but only by recognition of facts. Now the facts are:
To begin with, the Jews are unquestionably a race, not a religious community. And the Jew himself never describes himself as a Jewish German, a Jewish Pole or a Jewish American, but always as a German, Polish or American Jew. Never has the Jew absorbed more from the alien people in whose midst he lives than their language. And no more than a German who is forced to use the French language in France, the Italian language in Italy, and the Chinese language in China, thereby becomes a Frenchman, an Italian, let alone a Chinaman, no more can we call a Jew who happens to live amongst us and who is therefore forced to use German, a GerÛman. And even the Mosaic faith, however great its importance for the preservation of that race, cannot be the sole criterion for deciding who is a Jew and who is not. There is hardly a race in the world whose members all belong to a single religion.
Through inbreeding for thousands of years, often in very small circles, the Jew has been able to preserve his race and his racial characteristics much more successfully than most of the numerous people among whom he lives. As a result we have living in our midst a non-German, alien race, unwilling and indeed unable to shed its racial characteristics, its particular feelings, thoughts and ambitions, and nevertheless enjoying the same political rights as we ourselves do. And since even the Jew's feelings are limited to the material sphere, his thoughts and ambitions are bound to be so even more strongly. The dance around the golden calf becomes a ruthless struggle for all those goods that WE feel deep down are not the highest and not the only ones worth striving for on this earth.
The work of an individual is no longer determined by his character, by the importance of his achievement for the community, but solely by the size of his fortune, his wealth. The greatness of the nation is no longer measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual resources, but only by its material goods. All this results in that mental attitude and that quest for money and the power to protect it which allows the Jew to become so unscrupulous in his choice of means, so merciless in their use for his own ends. In autocratic states he cringes before the "majesty" of the princes and misuses their favors to become a leech on their people.
In a democracy, he vies for the favors of the masses, grovels before the "majesty of the people," but only recognizes the majesty of money. He saps the prince's character by Byzantine flattery; national pride and the strength of the nation by ridicule and shameless seduction to vice. His chosen weapon is public opinion as falsified by the press. His power is the power of the money he accumulates so easily and endlessly in the form of interest and with which he imposes upon the nation a yoke that is the more pernicious in that its glitter disguises its dire consequences. Everything that makes a people strive for greater things, be it religion, socialism or democracy, merely serves the Jew as a means to the satisfaction of his greed and thirst for power. The result of his works is racial tuberculosis of the nation.
And this has the following consequences: purely emotional anti-Semitism finds its final expression in the form of pogroms [i.e. acts of physical violence against individual Jews and Jewish communities]. Rational anti-Semitism, by contrast, must lead to a systematic and legal struggle against, and eradication of what privileges the Jews enjoy over other foreigners living among us (Alien Laws). Its final objective, however, must be the total removal of all Jews from our midst. Both objectives can only be achieved by a government of national strength, never by a government of national impotence.
The German republic owes its birth not to the united will of our peoples, but to the underhanded exploitation of a series of circumstances that, taken together, expressed themselves in deep dissatisfaction. These circumstances, however, arose independently of the political structure and are at work even today. Indeed, more so than ever before. Hence a large part of our people have come to recognize that it is not by changing the structure of the state as such that our position can be improved, but only by the rebirth of the nation's moral and spiritual forces.
And this rebirth cannot be prepared by the leadership of an irresponsible majority influenced by party dogmas or by the internationalist catch-phrases and slogans of an irresponsible press, but only by determined acts on the part of nationally-minded leaders with an inner sense of responsibility.
This very fact serves to deprive the Republic of the inner support of the spiritual forces any nation needs very badly. Hence the present leaders of the nation are forced to seek the support of those who alone have benefited and continue to benefit from changing the form of the German state, and who for that very reason became the driving force of the Revolution—the Jews. Disregarding the Jewish threat, which is undoubtedly recognized even by the present-day leaders (as witness various statements by prominent personalities), these men are forced to accept Jewish favors for their private advantage and to repay these favors. And the repayment does not merely involve satisfying every possible Jewish demand, but above all prevents the struggle of the duped people against their deceivers, by sabotaging the anti-Semitic movement.
Yours truly, Adolf Hitler