Winston Churchill's summary of Mein Kampf

This quote from The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill contains a very succinct summary of Mein Kampf.

While Mein Kampf has been banned across much of modern Europe, Churchill was quite insistent that major mistakes were made all across pre-war Europe because influential people failed to read and study it before Hitler rose to power.

When laid out as a bullet pointed list, Churchill's précis of Mein Kampf makes for devastating reading. As was pointed out in a comment by Hugh Fitzgerald when we blogged about this:

Yes, you are right. The most important — and relevant — part of that excerpt from “The Gathering Storm” is to be found in that list, now given in bullet form, describing the main points of Hitler’s program. Just follow it along, point by point, and see how much of it corresponds to what comes out of mosques and madrasas, in and out of the Middle East, in today’s up-to-the-minute Jihad News. link

Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message. The main thesis of Mein Kampf is simple. - The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill

Book:The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill

Publisher:Mariner Books, May 9, 1986

ISBN:039541055X Buy on Amazon

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The Law says:
The short version of this quote appears often but nearly always omits the key phrase: "The main thesis of Mein Kampf is simple.". After comparing Mein Kampf to the Koran, Churchill goes on to give a succinct and perceptive summary of Mein Kampf. The version below has had bullet points added to make it easier to read on screen but the text is exactly the same as the book.

Bold by WMD.

Pages:50,51

Extract:Although the German authorities had maintained order, and the German court had inflicted punishment, the feeling was widespread throughout the land that they were striking at their own flesh and blood, and were playing the foreigners’ game at the expense of Germany’s most faithful sons. Hitler’s sentence was reduced from four years to thirteen months. These months in the Landsberg fortress were, however, sufficient to enable him to complete in outline Mein Kampf, a treatise on his political philosophy inscribed to the dead of the recent Putsch. When eventually he came to power, there was no book which deserved more careful study from the rulers, political and military, of the Allied Powers. All was there –

• the programme of German resurrection;
• the technique of party propaganda;
• the plan for combating Marxism;
• the concept of a National-Socialist State;
• the rightful position of Germany at the summit of the world.

Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.

The main thesis of Mein Kampf is simple.

• Man is a fighting animal; therefore the nation, being a community of fighters, is a fighting unit.
• Any living organism which ceases to fight for its existence is doomed to extinction.
• A country or race which ceases to fight is equally doomed. The fighting capacity of a race depends on its purity. Hence the need for ridding it of foreign defilements.
• The Jewish race, owing to its universality, is of necessity pacifist and internationalist. Pacifism is the deadliest sin; for it means the surrender of the race in the fight for existence.
• The first duty of every country is therefore to nationalise the masses; intelligence in the case of the individual is not of first importance; will and determination are the prime qualities.
• The individual who is born to command is more valuable than countless thousands of subordinate natures.
• Only brute force can ensure the survival of the race; hence the necessity for military forms.
• The race must fight; a race that rests must rust and perish. Had the German race been united in good time, it would have been already master of the globe.
• The new Reich must gather within its fold all the scattered German elements in Europe.
• A race which has suffered defeat can be rescued by restoring its self-confidence.
• Above all things the Army must be taught to believe in its own invincibility.
• To restore the German nation, the people must be convinced that the recovery of freedom by force of arms is possible.
• The aristocratic principle is fundamentally sound. Intellectualism is undesirable.
• The ultimate aim of education is to produce a German who can be converted with the minimum of training into a soldier.
• The greatest upheavals in history would have been unthinkable had it not been for the driving force of fanatical and hysterical passions.
• Nothing could have been effected by the bourgeois virtues of peace and order.
• The world is now moving towards such an upheaval, and the new German State must see to it that the race is ready for the last and greatest decisions on this earth.
• Foreign policy may be unscrupulous.
• It is not the task of diplomacy to allow a nation to founder heroically, but rather to see that it can prosper and survive.
• England and Italy are the only two possible allies for Germany. No country will enter into an alliance with a cowardly pacifist state run by democrats and Marxists.
• So long as Germany does not fend for herself, nobody will fend for her.
• Her lost provinces cannot be regained by solemn appeals to Heaven or by pious hopes in the League of Nations, but only by force of arms.
• Germany must not repeat the mistake of fighting all her enemies at once.
• She must single out the most dangerous and attack him with all her forces.
• The world will only cease to be anti-German when Germany recovers equality of rights and resumes her place in the sun.
• There must be no sentimentality about Germany’s foreign policy.
• To attack France for purely sentimental reasons would be foolish.
• What Germany needs is increase of territory in Europe.
• Germany’s pre-war colonial policy was a mistake and should be abandoned.
• Germany must look for expansion to Russia and especially to the Baltic States.
• No alliance with Russia can be tolerated. To wage war together with Russia against the West would be criminal, for the aim of the Soviets is the triumph of international Judaism.

Such were the “granite pillars” of his policy

Online:Google Books

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