Mein Kampf
And so I found this activity of the Social Democrats not unattractive. I thought it was also rather in their favor than otherwise that they were trying (as I was then innocent and stupid enough to believe) to improve the living conditions of the workman. What most repelled me was their hostile attitude toward the fight for the preservation of Germanity, their pitiful wooing of the Slavic “comrades,” who did indeed accept this courtship in so far as it meant practical concessions, but otherwise maintained an arrogant and haughty reserve, thus giving the importunate beggars their just reward.
At the age of seventeen, then, I was but little acquainted with the word Marxism, while I thought Socialism and Social Democracy were identical ideas. Here too the hand of Fate was necessary to open my eyes to this unheard-of fraud on the people.
So far I had encountered the Social Democratic Party only in my capacity of spectator at a few mass demonstrations, without gaining the least insight into the mentality of its adherents or the nature of its doctrine; now at one blow I was brought in contact with the products of its training and “world-concept.” In the course of a few months I gained something which might have been delayed for decades: an understanding of a pestilence masquerading as social virtue and love of one’s neighbor, a pestilence from which humanity must soon free the earth, lest the earth soon be freed of humanity.
My first encounter with Social Democrats was on a construction job.
It was not altogether pleasing from the very first. My clothes were still in good order, my language was cultivated, my manner reserved. I had so much to do in coping with my own fate that I could trouble myself but little with the world around me. I was looking for work only to avoid starving, and so that I might have thus the possibility of going on educating myself, no matter how slowly. Perhaps I would have paid no attention to my new surroundings if an event had not taken place on the third or fourth day which compelled me at once to adopt some attitude. I was asked to join the organization.
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