Adolf Hitler on Discovering Gottfried Feder

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Continuing with passages from Mein Kampf, 2017 Thomas Dalton translation. See here.

The short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik) during the German Revolution of 1918–19, took the form of a workers' council republic. Räterepublik means a republic of councils or committees (council or committee is also the meaning of the Russian word soviet).

Chapter Eight: THE BEGINNING OF MY POLITICAL ACTIVITY

P 397 […] At the end of November 1918, I returned to Munich. I went to the replacement battalion of my regiment, which was now in the hands of the 'soldiers' council.' Their whole administration was quite repulsive to me, and so I decided to leave it as soon as possible. With my faithful war-comrade Ernst Schmiedt, I went to Traunstein and remained there until the camp was broken up.

In March 1919 we were back in Munich. […]

At that time, countless plans took shape in my mind. I spent days pondering about what could be done. Unfortunately, every project gave way before the hard fact that I was quite unknown and therefore didn't have even the minimum requirements for effective action. Later on I will explain the reasons why I didn't join any of the existing parties. [...]

A few days after the liberation of Munich, I was ordered to appear before the inquiry commission that was set up in the 2nd Infantry Regiment for the purpose of watching revolutionary activities.

That was my first more-or-less purely political activity.

A few weeks later I received orders to attend a 'course' that was being given to members of the army. This course was meant to teach certain fundamental civic principles. For me, the advantage of this organization was that it gave me a chance to meet fellow soldiers who were of the same mind, and with whom I could discuss the actual situation. We were all more or less firmly convinced that Germany could not be saved from imminent disaster by those who had participated in the November treachery—which is to say, the Center [party] and the Social Democrats. Also, the so-called Bourgeois National group couldn't repair the damage that had been done, even if they had the best intentions. They lacked a number of prerequisites, without which such a task could never be successful. The years that followed justified the opinions that we held at that time.

[...]

P 401  8.2  TWO TYPES OF CAPITAL

Previously, I didn't clearly recognize the difference between capital that is purely the product of creative labor, and capital that is exclusively the result of financial speculation. Here I needed an inspiration to set my mind thinking in this direction; but that impulse had not appeared.

The necessary inspiration now came from one of the men who lectured in the course I mentioned earlier. This was Gottfried Feder.

For the first time in my life, I heard a discussion of the principles of international stock exchange capital and loan capital.

After hearing Feder's first lecture, the idea immediately came into my head that I had now found one of the most essential prerequisites for the founding of a new party.

To my mind, Feder's merit lay in the ruthlessly brutal way in which he described the double character of capital engaged in stock-exchange and loan transaction, exposing the fact that this capital is always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions, his statements were so full of common sense that his critics didn't deny their theoretical soundness, but only whether it would be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me this seemed the strongest point in Feder's teaching, though others considered it a weakness.

[...]

P 407  8.5  FIGHT AGAINST INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CAPITAL

When I heard Gottfried Feder's first lecture on 'breaking interest-slavery,' I understood immediately that here was a truth of transcendental importance for the future of the German people. The absolute separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy would make it possible to oppose the internationalization of the German economy without at the same time attacking capital per se. Doing so would jeopardize the foundations of our national independence. I clearly saw what was developing in Germany, and I realized then that the hardest battle we would have to fight would not be against the enemy nations, but against international capital. In Feder's speech I found an effective rallying-cry for our coming struggle.

[…]

In the second place,the following must be noted: Any idea may be a source of danger if it is seen as an end in itself, when really it's only the means to an end. For me and all true National Socialists, there is only one doctrine: People and Fatherland.

We have to fight to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and people, the sustenance of our children, the purity of our blood, and the freedom and independence of the Fatherland. Only then may our people fulfill the mission assigned to them by the creator of the universe.

All ideas and ideals, all teaching and all knowledge, must serve these ends. Everything must be examined from this viewpoint and turned to practical uses, or else discarded. Thus a theory can never become a mere dead doctrine, since everything must serve life.

Thus it was that Gottfried Feder's conclusions caused me to make a fundamental study of a question with which I had previously not been very familiar.

I began to study again, and thus it was that I came to truly understand the substance and purpose of the life-work of the Jew Karl Marx. His Capital* became intelligible to me now for the first time. I now exactly understood the Social Democrats' fight against national economics—a fight that was to prepare the ground for the hegemony of a true international and stock exchange capital.

*Das Kapitol, originally published in 1867.