Mein Kampf
gin to be overrun by economics as such, the economic structure itself becomes a tempting cause of subjugation and oppression.
The pre-War belief that the world could be opened, or even conquered, for the German people by a peaceable colonial and commercial policy was a perfect sign that the really state-building and state-preserving virtues had been lost, and with them the consequent insight, strength of will, and determination for action; natural law brought the World War and its aftermath as retribution. To anyone who did not look below the surface, this attitude of the German nation—for it was really practically universal—could not but be an insoluble puzzle; after all, Germany, herself was the most wonderful example of an empire created on a basis of pure power politics. Prussia, the nucleus of the Empire, was created by radiant heroism, not by financial operations or business deals; and the Empire itself was but the magnificent reward of a leadership based on power politics and of soldierly courage to dare death. How could the political instincts of the Germans, of all peoples, become so diseased as this? For this was no single individual phenomenon, but a matter of disintegrating forces in terrifying number which now flickered hither and yon among the people, like will-o’-the-wisps, now attacked the nation as poisonous inflammations. It seemed as if a perpetual stream of poison was being sent by some mysterious power to the very uttermost blood-vessels of what had once been a hero’s body and was crippling common sense and the simple instinct of self-preservation more and more.
Forced by my attitude toward the German economic and alliance policy from 1912 to 1914, I reviewed these questions times without number; as the solution of the puzzle, elimination brought me more and more to that power which, from quite a different standpoint, I had already come to know in Vienna: the Marxist doctrine and world-view, and their resulting organization.
For the second time in my life I dug my way into this doctrine of destruction—being guided this time not by the impressions and effect of my daily surroundings, but by observation
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