Lies being taught;
Mein Kampf is unintelligible ravings of a
maniac.
Now the Truth; Read and know. VOLUME II Chapter IIb: functions of
‘State’
“Those who are physically and mentally
unhealthy and unfit must not perpetuate their own suffering in the bodies of
their children. Through educational means the State must teach individuals that
illness is not a disgrace but an unfortunate accident which has to be pitied,
yet that it is a crime and a disgrace to make this affliction all the worse by
passing on disease and defects to innocent creatures out of mere egotism.
And the State must also teach the people that
it is an expression of a really noble nature and that it is a humanitarian act
worthy of admiration if a person who innocently suffers from hereditary disease
refrains from having a child of his own but gives his love and affection to
some unknown child who, through its health, promises to become a robust member
of a healthy community. In accomplishing such an educational task the State
integrates its function by this activity in the moral sphere. It must act on
this principle without paying any attention to the question of whether its
conduct will be understood or misconstrued, blamed or praised.
The WELTANSCHAUUNG which bases the State on
the racial idea must finally succeed in bringing about a nobler era, in which
men will no longer pay exclusive attention to breeding and rearing pedigree
dogs and horses and cats, but will endeavour to improve the breed of the human
race itself. That will be an era of silence and renunciation for one class of
people, while the others will give their gifts and make their sacrifices
joyfully.
That such a mentality may be possible cannot
be denied in a world where hundreds and thousands accept the principle of
celibacy from their own choice, without being obliged or pledged to do so by
anything except an ecclesiastical precept. Why should it not be possible to
induce people to make this sacrifice if, instead of such a precept, they were
simply told that they ought to put an end to this truly original sin of racial
corruption which is steadily being passed on from one generation to another.
And, further, they ought to be brought to realize that it is their bounden duty
to give to the Almighty Creator beings such as He himself made to His own
image.
The State will first of all have to base its educational
work not on the mere imparting of knowledge but rather on physical training and
development of healthy bodies. The cultivation of the intellectual facilities
comes only in the second place. And here again it is character which has to be
developed first of all, strength of will and decision. And the educational
system ought to foster the spirit of readiness to accept responsibilities
gladly. Formal instruction in the sciences must be considered last in
importance. Accordingly the State must start with the principle that a person
whose formal education in the sciences is relatively small but who is
physically sound and robust, of a steadfast and honest character, ready and
able to make decisions and endowed with strength of will, is a more useful
member of the national community than a weakling who is scholarly and refined.
A nation composed of learned men who are physical weaklings, hesitant about decisions
of the will, and timid pacifists, is not capable of assuring even its own
existence on this earth.
Moltke's saying, that in the long run fortune
favours only the efficient, is certainly valid for the relationship between
body and spirit. A mind which is sound will generally maintain its dwelling in
a body that is sound.
Accordingly, in the People's State physical
training is not a matter for the individual alone. Nor is it a duty which first
devolves on the parents and only secondly or thirdly a public interest; but it
is necessary for the preservation of the people, who are represented and protected
by the State. As regards purely formal education the State even now interferes
with the individual's right of self-determination and insists upon the right of
the community by submitting the child to an obligatory system of training,
without paying attention to the approval or disapproval of the parents. In a
similar way and to a higher degree the new People's State must organize its educational
work in such a way that the bodies of the young will be systematically trained
from infancy onwards, so as to be tempered and hardened for the demands to be
made on them in later years. Above all, the State must see to it that a
generation of stay-at-homes is not developed.
The work of education and hygiene has to
begin with the young mother. The painstaking efforts carried on for several
decades have succeeded in abolishing septic infection at childbirth and
reducing puerperal fever to a relatively small number of cases. And so it ought
to be possible by means of instructing sisters and mothers in an opportune way,
to institute a system of training the child from early infancy onwards so that
this may serve as an excellent basis for future development.
The People's State ought to allow much more
time for physical training in the school. It is nonsense to burden young brains
with a load of material of which, as experience shows, they retain only a small
part, and mostly not the essentials, but only the secondary and useless portion;
because the young mind is incapable of sifting the right kind of learning out
of all the stuff that is pumped into it. Not a single day should be allowed to
pass in which the young pupil does not have one hour of physical training in
the morning and one in the evening; and every kind of sport and gymnastics
should be included.
Generally speaking, the function of sport is
not only to make the individual strong, alert and daring, but also to harden
the body and train it to endure an adverse environment.
Our leadership in the purely intellectual
sphere has always been brilliant, but as regards will-power in practical
affairs our leadership has been beneath criticism.
Of course education cannot make a courageous
man out of one who is temperamentally a coward. But a man who naturally
possesses a certain degree of courage will not be able to develop that quality
if his defective education has made him inferior to others from the very start as
regards physical strength and prowess. The army offers the best example of the
fact that the knowledge of one's physical ability develops a man's courage and
militant spirit. Outstanding heroes are not the rule in the army, but the
average represents men of high courage. The excellent schooling which the
German soldiers received before the War imbued the members of the whole
gigantic organism with a degree of confidence in their own superiority such as
even our opponents never thought possible. All the immortal examples of dauntless
courage and daring which the German armies gave during the late summer and
autumn of
1914, as they advanced from triumph to
triumph, were the result of that education which had been pursued
systematically. During those long years of peace before the last War men who
were almost physical weaklings were made capable of incredible deeds, and thus
a self-confidence was developed which did not fail even in the most terrible
battles.
It is our German people, which broke down and
were delivered over to be kicked by the rest of the world, that had need of the
power that comes by suggestion from self-confidence. But this confidence in
one's self must be instilled into our children from their very early years. The
whole system of education and training must be directed towards fostering in
the child the conviction that he is unquestionably a match for any- and
everybody. The individual has to regain his own physical strength and prowess
in order to believe in the invincibility of the nation to which he belongs.
What has formerly led the German armies to victory was the sum total of the
confidence which each individual had in himself, and which all of them had in
those who held the positions of command. What will restore the national
strength of the German people is the conviction that they will be able to
reconquer their liberty. But this conviction can only be the final product of
an equal feeling in the millions of individuals. And here again we must have no
illusions.
The collapse of our people was overwhelming,
and the efforts to put an end to so much misery must also be overwhelming. It
would be a bitter and grave error to believe that our people could be made
strong again simply by means of our present bourgeois training in good order
and obedience. That will not suffice if we are to break up the present order of
things, which now sanctions the acknowledgment of our defeat and cast the
broken chains of our slavery in the face of our opponents. Only by a superabundance
of national energy and a passionate thirst for liberty can we recover what has
been lost.
Also the manner of clothing the young should
be such as harmonizes with this purpose. It is really lamentable to see how our
young people have fallen victims to a fashion mania which perverts the meaning of
the old adage that clothes make the man.
Military training is excluded among us
to-day, and therewith the only institution which in peace-times at least partly
made up for the lack of physical training in our education. Therefore what I
have suggested is all the more necessary in our time. The success of our old
military training not only showed itself in the education of the individual but
also in the influence which it exercised over the mutual relationship between
the sexes. The young girl preferred the soldier to one who was not a soldier.
The People's State must not confine its control of physical training to the
official school period, but it must demand that, after leaving school and while
the adolescent body is still developing, the boy continues this training. The
present State, which does not interest itself in developing healthy men, has
criminally neglected this duty. It leaves our contemporary youth to be
corrupted on the streets and in the brothels, instead of keeping hold of the
reins and continuing the physical training of these youths up to the time when
they are grown into healthy young men and women.
In the People's State the army will no longer
be obliged to teach boys how to walk and stand erect, but it will be the final
and supreme school of patriotic education. In the army the young recruit will
learn the art of bearing arms, but at the same time he will be equipped for his
other duties in later life. And the supreme aim of military education must always
be to achieve that which was attributed to the old army as its highest merit:
namely, that through his military schooling the boy must be transformed into a
man, that he must not only learn to obey but also acquire the fundamentals that
will enable him one day to command. He must learn to remain silent not only
when he is rightly rebuked but also when he is wrongly rebuked.
Furthermore, on the self-consciousness of his
own strength and on the basis of that ESPRIT DE CORPS which inspires him and
his comrades, he must become convinced that he belongs to a people who are
invincible.
After he has completed his military training
two certificates shall be handed to the soldier. The one will be his diploma as
a citizen of the State, a juridical document which will enable him to take part
in public affairs. The second will be an attestation of his physical health,
which guarantees his fitness for marriage.
The People's State will have to direct the
education of girls just as that of boys and according to the same fundamental
principles. Here again special importance must be given to physical training,
and only after that must the importance of spiritual and mental training be
taken into account. In the education of the girl the final goal always to be kept
in mind is that she is one day to be a mother.
It is only in the second place that the
People's State must busy itself with the training of character, using all the
means adapted to that purpose.
Of course the essential traits of the
individual character are already there fundamentally before any education takes
place. A person who is fundamentally egoistic will always remain fundamentally
egoistic, and the idealist will always remain fundamentally an idealist.
Besides those, however, who already possess a definite stamp of character there
are millions of people with characters that are indefinite and vague. The born
delinquent will always remain a delinquent, but numerous people who show only a
certain tendency to commit criminal acts may become useful members of the
community if rightly trained; whereas, on the other hand, weak and unstable
characters may easily become evil elements if the system of education has been
bad.
This is only one example among many. The
deliberate training of fine and noble traits of character in our schools to-day
is almost negative. In the future much more emphasis will have to be laid on
this side of our educational work. Loyalty, self-sacrifice and discretion are
virtues which a great nation must possess. And the teaching and development of these
in the school is a more important matter than many others things now included
in the curriculum. To make the children give up habits of complaining and
whining and howling when they are hurt, etc., also belongs to this part of
their training. If our youths, during their years in the primary schools, had
had their minds crammed with a little less knowledge, and if instead they had
been better taught how to be masters of themselves, it would have served us
well during the years 1914-1918.
In its educational system the People's State
will have to attach the highest importance to the development of character,
hand-in-hand with physical training. Many more defects which our national
organism shows at present could be at least ameliorated, if not completely
eliminated, by education of the right kind.
Extreme importance should be attached to the
training of will-power and the habit of making firm decisions, also the habit
of being always ready to accept responsibilities.
In the training of our old army the principle
was in vogue that any order is always better than no order. Applied to our
youth this principle ought to take the form that any answer is better than no answer.
The fear of replying, because one fears to be wrong, ought to be considered
more humiliating than giving the wrong reply. On this simple and primitive
basis our youth should be trained to have the courage to act.
It has been often lamented that in November
and December 1918 all the authorities lost their heads and that, from the
monarch down to the last divisional commander, nobody had sufficient mettle to
make a decision on his own responsibility. That terrible fact constitutes a
grave rebuke to our educational system; because what was then revealed on a
colossal scale at that moment of catastrophe was only what happens on a smaller
scale everywhere among us. It is the lack of will-power, and not the lack of
arms, which renders us incapable of offering any serious resistance to-day.
This defect is found everywhere among our people and prevents decisive action wherever
risks have to be taken, as if any great action can be taken without also taking
the risk. Quite unsuspectingly, a German General found a formula for this
lamentable lack of the will-to-act when he said: "I act only when I can
count on a 51 per cent probability of success." In that '51 per cent
probability' we find the very root of the German collapse. The man who demands
from Fate a guarantee of his success deliberately denies the significance of a
heroic act. For this significance consists in the very fact that, in the
definite knowledge that the situation in question is fraught with mortal
danger, an action is undertaken which may lead to success. A patient suffering
from cancer and who knows that his death is certain if he does not undergo an
operation, needs no 51 per cent probability of a cure before facing the
operation. And if the operation promises only half of one per cent probability
of success a man of courage will risk it and would not whine if it turned out
unsuccessful.
All in all, the cowardly lack of will-power
and the incapacity for making decisions are chiefly results of the erroneous
education given us in our youth. The disastrous effects of this are now
widespread among us. The crowning examples of that tragic chain of consequences
are shown in the lack of civil courage which our leading statesmen display.
The cowardice which leads nowadays to the
shirking of every kind of responsibility springs from the same roots. Here
again it is the fault of the education given our young people. This drawback
permeates all sections of public life and finds its immortal consummation in
the institutions of government that function under the parliamentary regime.
Just as the People's State must one day give
its attention to training the will-power and capacity for decision among the
youth, so too it must inculcate in the hearts of the young generation from
early childhood onwards a readiness to accept responsibilities, and the courage
of open and frank avowal.
The formal imparting of knowledge, which
constitutes the chief work of our educational system to-day, will be taken over
by the People's State with only few modifications. These modifications must be
made in three branches.
First of all, the brains of the young people
must not generally be burdened with subjects of which ninety-five per cent are
useless to them and are therefore forgotten again. The curriculum of the
primary and secondary schools presents an odd mixture at the present time. In
many branches of study the subject matter to be learned has become so enormous
that only a very small fraction of it can be remembered later on, and indeed
only a very small fraction of this whole mass of knowledge can be used. On the
other hand, what is learned is insufficient for anybody who wishes to
specialize in any certain branch for the purpose of earning his daily bread.
The principal purpose of this copious instruction
is frustrated, for that purpose cannot be to make the brain capable of learning
by simply offering it an enormous and varied amount of subjects for
acquisition, but rather to furnish the individual with that stock of knowledge
which he will need in later life and which he can use for the good of the
community. This aim, however, is rendered illusory if, because of the
superabundance of subjects that have been crammed into his head in childhood, a
person is able to remember nothing, or at least not the essential portion, of
all this in later life. There is no reason why millions of people should learn
two or three languages during the school years, when only a very small fraction
will have the opportunity to use these languages in later life and when most of
them will therefore forget those languages completely. To take an instance: Out
of 100,000 students who learn French there are probably not 2,000 who will be
in a position to make use of this accomplishment in later life, while 98,000
will never have a chance to utilize in practice what they have learned in
youth. They have spent thousands of hours on a subject which will afterwards be
without any value or importance to them. The argument that these matters form
part of the general process of educating the mind is invalid. It would be sound
if all these people were able to use this learning in after life. But, as the
situation stands, 98,000 are tortured to no purpose and waste their valuable
time, only for the sake of the 2,000 to whom the language will be of any use.
A
reform of particular importance is that which ought to take place in the
present methods of teaching history. The essential features which are of real
significance are not taught. It is left to the more or less bright intelligence
of the individual to discover the inner motivating urge amid the mass of dates
and chronological succession of events.
The subject matter of our historical teaching
must be curtailed. For history must not be studied merely with a view to
knowing what happened in the past but as a guide for the future, and to teach
us what policy would be the best to follow for the future good of our own
people. That is the real end; and the teaching of history is only a means to
attain this end. The goal is completely forgotten. Do not reply that a profound
study of history demands a detailed knowledge of all dates because otherwise we
could not fix the great lines of development. That task belongs to the professional
historians. But the average man is not a professor of history. For him history
has only one mission and that is to provide him with such an amount of
historical knowledge as is necessary in order to enable him to form an independent
opinion on the political affairs of his own country. The man who wants to
become a professor of history can devote himself to all the details later on.
Naturally he will have to occupy himself even with the smallest details. Of
course our present teaching of history is not adequate to all this. Its scope
is too vast for the average student and too limited for the student who wishes
to be an historical expert.
To sum up: The People's State must
reconstruct our system of general instruction in such a way that it will
embrace only what is essential. Beyond this it will have to make provision for
a more advanced teaching in the various subjects for those who want to
specialize in them. It will suffice for the average individual to be acquainted
with the fundamentals of the various subjects to serve as the basis of what may
be called an all-round education. He ought to study exhaustively and in detail
only that subject in which he intends to work during the rest of his life. A
general instruction in all subjects should be obligatory, and specialization
should be left to the choice of the individual.
In this way the scholastic programme would be
shortened, and thus several school hours would be gained which could be
utilized for physical training and character training, in will-power, the
capacity for making practical judgments, decisions, etc.”
Adolf Hitler.
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