Adolf Hitler - Table Talk
Priority for Talent:
Priority for talent, that's the only rule I know! By sticking to these principles, the Party will always have supremacy over the State, for it will have the most active and resolute men at its head (92).
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Poorest child should lay claim to the highest functions—if he has enough talent:
“Class prejudices can't be maintained in a socially advanced State like ours, in which the proletariat produces men of such superiority. Every reasonably conducted organisation is bound to favour the development of beings of worth. It has been my wish that the educative organisations of the Party should enable the poorest child to lay claim to the highest functions, if he has enough talent” (194).
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Meritocracy Explained by Hitler:
“If the English behaved as we behave in the Party, they would give advancement only to the most deserving. It's good that the professions should be organised, but on condition that each man finds his place. It's folly to have a man build roads who would at best be capable of sweeping them, just as it is scandalous to make a road-sweeper of a man who has the stuff of an engineer.
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“National Socialism has introduced into daily life the idea that one should choose an occupation because one is predisposed to it by one's aptitudes, and not because one is predestined for it by birth. Thus National Socialism exercises a calming effect. It reconciles men instead of setting them against one another. It's ridiculous that a child should ever feel obliged to take up his father's profession. Only his aptitudes and gifts should be taken into consideration. Why shouldn't a child have propensities that his parents didn't have? Isn't everyone in Germany sprung from the peasantry? One must not put a curb on individuals. On the contrary, one must avoid whatever might prevent them from rising. If one systematically encourages the selection of the fittest, the time will come when talents will again be, in a sort of way, the privilege of an élite” (194-95).
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Three Ways of Settling the Social Question:
“There are three ways of settling the social question. The privileged class rules the people. The insurgent proletariat exterminates the possessing class. Or else a third formula gives each man the opportunity to develop himself according to his talents. When a man is competent, it matters little to me if he's the son of a caretaker” (248).
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Objectives of the Nazi Revolution:
“A revolution has three main objectives. First of all, it's a matter of breaking down the partitions between classes, so as to enable every man to rise. Secondly, it's a matter of creating a standard of living such that the poorest will be assured of a decent existence. Finally, it's a matter of acting in such a way that the benefits of civilisation become common property” (254).
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All Men Are Not Created Equal Before God:
“As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse” (254).
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Difference between the Elites and the Masses:
“Without organisation—that is to say, without compulsion—and, consequently, without sacrifice on the part of individuals, nothing can work properly. Organised life offers the spectacle of a perpetual renunciation by individuals of a part of their liberty. The more exalted a situation a man occupies, the easier this renunciation should appear to him. Since his field of vision is wider, he should be able all the better to admit the necessity for self-compulsion. In a healthy State, this is what distinguishes the élite from the men who remain mingled with the great masses. The man who rises must grow with his task, his understanding must expand simultaneously with his functions. If a street-sweeper is unable or unwilling to sacrifice his tobacco or his beer, then I think: "Very well, my good man, that's precisely why you're a street-sweeper and not one of the ruling personalities of the State!" It's just as well, by the way, that
things are like that, for the nation, collectively, has just as much need of its street-sweepers” (288).
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Only Those Who Prove Their Worth Can Control Public Affairs:
“Only those who have proved their worth should be summoned to control public affairs” (298).
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf
Rather than help the poor through social programs, eliminate them as weak individuals:
“Just as Nature does not concentrate her greatest attention in preserving what exists, but in breeding offspring to carry on the species, likewise, in human life, it is less important artificially to alleviate existing evil, which, in view of human nature, is ninety-nine per cent impossible, than to ensure from the start healthier channels for a future development.
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“During my struggle for existence in Vienna, it had become clear to me that Social activity must never and on no account be directed toward philanthropic flim-flam, but rather toward the elimination of the basic deficiencies in the organization of our economic and cultural life that must – or at all events can – lead to the degeneration of the individual” 29-30. (Manheim Translation)
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Hitler declares war on the Marxist idea that all men are equal:
“… thus declaring war on the Marxist idea that men are equal …” (442).
Men’s minds cannot be equal:
“In general, I must evaluate peoples differently on the basis of the race they belong to, and the same applies to the individual men within a national community. The realization that peoples are not equal transfers itself to the individual man within a national community, in the sense that men’s minds cannot be equal, since here, too, the blood components, though equal in their broad outlines, are, in particular cases, subject to thousands of the finest differentiations” (442).
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Aristocratic principle of leadership going to the best minds:
“This sifting according to capacity and ability cannot be undertaken mechanically; it is a task which the struggle of daily life unceasingly performs.
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“A philosophy of life which endeavors to reject the democratic mass idea and give this earth to the best people — that is, the highest humanity — must logically obey the same aristocratic principle within this people and make sure that the leadership and the highest influence in this people fall to the best minds. Thus, it builds, not upon the idea of the majority, but upon the idea of personality” (443).
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Hitler is anti-Marxist because it excludes the individual for the masses and for equality:
“The destructive effect of the Jew’s activity in other national bodies is basically attributable only to his eternal efforts to undermine the position of the personality in the host-peoples and to replace it by the mass. …
“Marxism presents itself as the perfection of the Jew’s attempt to exclude the pre-eminence of personality in all fields of human life and replace it by the numbers of the mass. To this, in the political sphere, corresponds the parliamentary form of government, which, from the smallest germ cells of the municipality up to the supreme leadership of the Reich, we see in such disastrous operation, and in the economic sphere, the system of a trade-union movement which does not serve the real interests of the workers, but exclusively the destructive purposes of the international world Jew. In precisely the measure in which the economy is withdrawn from the influence of the personality principle and instead exposed to the influences and effects of the masses, it must lose its efficacy in serving all and benefiting all, and gradually succumb to a sure retrogression” (447).
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Hitler raises the best minds to leadership:
“The folkish state must care for the welfare of its citizens by recognizing in all and everything the importance of the value of personality, thus in all fields preparing the way for that highest measure of productive performance which grants to the individual the highest measure of participation.
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“And accordingly, the folkish state must free all leadership and especially the highest — that is, the political leadership — entirely from the parliamentary principle of majority rule — in other words, mass rule — and instead absolutely guarantee the right of the personality.
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“From this the following realization results:
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“The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence.”
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“But as, in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves …” (449).
Hermann Rauschning - The Voice of Destruction
Hitler’s triangle as a symbol of the new social order:
“I asked Hitler the meaning of the triangle he had drawn for Ley, of the Labor Front, and a number of Gauleiter, in order to make the future social order clear to them. Evidently Hitler did not remember. Forster had not been able fully to explain it to me, I told him, but had been much impressed by it nevertheless. He said it made everything quite clear.
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"’Oh, yes, I remember,’ Hitler replied. ‘This is what you mean: one side of the triangle is the “Labor Front,” the social community, the classless community in which each man helps his neighbor. Everyone feels secure here, each one gets assistance, advice and occupation for his leisure time. All are equal here.
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"’The second side is the professional class. Here each individual is separate, graded, according to his ability and quality, to work for the general good. Knowledge is the criterion here. Each is worth as much as he accomplishes.
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"’The third side represents the party, which, in one or other of its many branches, embraces every German who has not been found unworthy. Each one in the party shares the privilege of leading the nation. Here the decisive factors are devotion and resolution. All are equal as party comrades, but each man must submit to a grading of ranks that is inviolable.’
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“This, I agreed, was roughly what Forster had tried to explain to me, but he had been only partially successful. There had been some mystic significance as well, the first side at the same time representing the will in man, the second, what is usually called the heart, and the third, the intelligence.
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“Hitler laughed at this. There was no need to labor the comparison, he remarked. He had only meant to show how each individual, in all his feelings and activities, must be included in some section of the party.
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"’The party takes over the function of what has been society—that is what I wanted them to understand. The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism …’” (190-91).