WHAT DID HITLER ACTUALLY BELIEVE?

Total gamer mindset

by Colin Liddell

The British nationalist thinker Johnathan Bowden once talked about right-wingers "stepping over Hitler." This is easier said than done if you are on Russian-infested dissident spaces on the Internet.

In fact, you can't go five minutes on something like Twitter without encountering Hitler, the Nazis, various anti-Semitic tropes, and the morons who push them. So, it is important at least to have a handle on the actual ideas that are being referred to when people invoke this kind of shit.

Luckily, Hitler was never shy in making his views known. His ideas are rigorously, if somewhat inelegantly, expressed in the two volumes of Mein Kampf , book he wrote half in prison and half out of it.

The following is a brief outline of his views, by a German dissident, Walter Theimer, who was residing in London in the 1930s when he summarised Adolf's "big book." Needless to say much of what Hitler wrote has been totally disproved or made to look stupid by subsequent events, while other parts at least have a superficial resemblance to certain trends. Also, Hitler clearly changed a few of his positions later on, often in what turned out to be a direction detrimental for himself and Germany. 

Here, then, is Theimer's summary of Mein Kampf from a book in my possession published in December 1939, but clearly in preparation before the onset of war:

"[Hitler] sees the essence of all life in race and blood. There is a superior race in the world, the Aryan race, sometimes also referred to as the Nordic one, which has subdued peoples of inferior race and built up our present civilization on the basis of their labour. But the Aryans have committed the sin of crossbreeding with their inferior subjects, thus spoiling their blood and bringing about gradual physical decline and spiritual decadence. There is a sinister power desirous of the destruction of the Aryan peoples: the Jews. They form a secret world-wide organisation, their principal object being to disintegrate the racial basis of the Aryan peoples by systematically influencing them to the mixing of blood.

In this way they hope to create a decadent race of mongrels which will easily succumb to Jewish domination thereafter. The stronghold of the Jews is France, which is completely under the control of Jewish financiers and the prey of a constant inflow of Negroes interbreeding with the French population. This is the work of the Jews who strive for the formation of a mulatto state stretching from the Congo to the Rhine with a view to bastardising the rest of white Europe from this basis. The most outspoken Aryan Power in the world is Germany which is therefore the chief object of Jewish hostility. The Jews have organised the World War of 1914-1918 in order to destroy the German bastion of Aryanism. They instigate France to annihilate Germany completely and at the same time they attack from the other side in the guise of Bolshevism, and Marxist socialism in general, is nothing but a trick of the Jews for obtaining world domination. Communists, Socialists, Democrats and Freemasons work for Jewish Bolshevist aims in all countries, particularly in Germany, and Hitler feels he is called upon to save Germany, and Aryan mankind in general, from this danger.

His programme is to organise a strong nationalist state under National-Socialist leadership, to suppress all other parties, to combat the Jews and to concentrate on racial improvement. Nationalist-Socialist Germany will re-arm and undo the Treaty of Versailles. All German speakers must be united within the Reich. But this is not enough; Germany must proceed to an active foreign policy Pre-war Germany concentrated on naval and colonial expansion, thus arousing Britain's fateful enmity. This mistake must not be repeated. The true task of Germany is to seek expansion on the European continent where she will, in Hitler's opinion, not be in rivalry with Britain. Germany must conquer new soil for her people and this soil lies in the east, South Russia (Ukraine) must be conquered and German peasants must be settled there. But before turning eastward Germany must clear her back in the West. France must be destroyed. For this object Germany needs allies; two nations, Britain and Italy, suggest themselves for this part. Both dislike French hegemony in Europe and both can easily be won over. Britain's friendship will be won by German renunciation of the construction of a new navy and of the return of the colonies, while Italy's price is still lower: simply the abandonment of German South Tyrol. In alliance with Britain and Italy, Germany will crush France. Then Germany will march to the east, smashing rotten bolshevik Russia and taking wide new territory from her, A century hence there will be a German Empire of 250,000,000 people of first-class race on the continent. Questions of expansion overseas must be postponed until Germany's continental position has been secured. This done, such questions should be reviewed, as 'Germany will either be a World Power or she will not be at all.'"

As you can see from this precise and rather accurate summary of his views, Hitler's whole outlook was based on the need to re-fight WWI on terms advantageous to Germany and therefore with revised war aims.

In fact, there is an uncanny similarity to a some fat nerd replaying a turn-based strategy video game, like, say, Sid Meier's Civilization II, in his darkened basement, with a "new strategy" to get to "Emperor" level. Pretty funny, eh? Except for all the dead people.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia).