Chapter 15 Notes (with layers of sarcasm to keep me sane)
- Short. A three page chapter.
- He expresses how outraged he is that race is not considered in becoming a German citizen. Absolutely dreadful.
- He believes citizenship is extremely important and a great honor. To earn citizenship is to take a solemn oath to Germany. He reassures his readers after he reveals the horrors of the process of citizenship that although they may be upset, it is important that they understand just how incredibly foolish it is.
- “It must be a greater honour to be a street-cleaner and citizen of this Reich than a king in a foreign state.” He emphasized this specific sentence in italics.
- All it takes to be a German citizen is to be born there. Outrageous. Any Jewish, Asian, African, or Polish resident can have a child who instantly becomes a supposed citizen of Germany. He believes this must change.
- He uses the United States as an example of a nation with a sensical policy because of the 1921 & 1924 Immigration Acts. He does not mention them by name, but cites “The American Union” as a nation “in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially.”
- The acts created the National Origins Formula, which imposed numerical limits on immigration and a quota system to establish those limits.
- The Immigration Act of 1921 restricted the number of immigrants annually admitted from any country to 3% of the number of residents from that country living in the United States.
- The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the quota to 2% of the number of residents from that country living in the United States.
- Europe was in shambles after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, World War I, and the Russian revolution. This caused a significant increase in immigration to the United States, which was already experiencing rising unemployment due to the ceasing of WWI military industry. The result was significant anti-immigration sentiment among the American public, resulting in the acts.
- The entire chapter argues that the process of citizenship is a problem, rather than immigration. The United States also practiced birth-right citizenship, and our naturalization process was similar to Germany’s. Perhaps he has difficulty distinguishing between immigration and citizenship. This is what happens when a failed artist attempts to approach politics.
- He also mentions that the government does not consider the physical health of the new citizen as long as he does not present a financial burden or political danger. This is a serious issue.
- He describes this policy as taking in poison elements into Germany that they can scarcely ever overcome.
Chapter 16 Notes (just pain)
- “It would be lunacy to try to estimate the value of man according to his race, thus declaring war on the Marxist idea that men are equal, unless we are determined to draw the ultimate consequences.”
- This was the opening to a paragraph so baffling that I honestly cannot understand what he intended in his writing. He also argues that it is important to judge people as individuals. He then makes comments about putting the more valuable races in important positions.
- Hitler did not view the Jews as people.
- This was the opening of the chapter.
- Hitler does not believe in democratic mass ideal. Positions of leadership and highest influence should be given to the best minds. The government should not be based on the idea of the majority, but on personality.
- Essentially, people are stupid, so not every vote should be equal.
- Germany needs to be much better than everyone else. The Nazis want to make Germany a powerhouse.
- He claims that it is important for Germany to improve, and says that while important, only improving economically, such as a better balance between rich and poor, or by extending economic power to the broader masses, or by a fairer wage through elimination of large differences in pay, is not all that Germany should be doing.
- Everything needs to be improved.
- He analyzes human cultural evolution, and identifies inventions and domination over other living creatures as what gave man dominance on Earth.
- The masses do not invent, nor does the majority organize or think. Therefore, the best system facilitates the labors of the individual and their creative forces. A good society places the individual above the masses.
- Personality is only really excluded in politics (says Hitler, who maxed out his charisma stats). In the administration of the national community, the opinion of the majority is the most decisive.
- “While all human culture is solely the result of the individual’s creative activity, everywhere, and particularly in the highest leadership of the national community, the principle of the value of the majority appears decisive, and from that high place begins to gradually poison all life.” Basically what the government values and what is actually good for the nation and people and culture are very different.
- The Jews influence the government because they “undermine the position of the personality in the host-peoples” and “replace it by the mass.” This is how, quite tragically, “the organizing principle of Aryan humanity is replaced by the destructive principle of the Jew.”
- The Jews are dissolving human culture.
- Shops that take into account their production and sales rather than the interests of their employees are examples of this.
- They injure collective achievement, and thus injure individual achievement.
- Marxism is not capable of creating a culture of its own. Eventually everything returns to the ideal of personality.
- In order to succeed, the National Socialist movement must recognize the value of race and importance of personality and perform complete upheaval rather than patchwork on the current system.
- Majority rule is bad for deciding leaders. “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.”
- Councils and advisors serve as diverse voices, but the most efficient and effective systems are those where decisions are made by one man. He suggests government systems not with representative bodies but rather advisory bodies. The government will be based on absolute responsibility combined with absolute authority.
- “Authority of every leader downward and responsibility upward.”
- He reminds the reader at the end of the chapter that majority rule has only appeared in nations that existed for brief periods before decaying. Democracy is overrated.
